Air traffic management at Delhi will become easier with a new ATC tower, yet delays in modernisation are worrisome

Delhi Airport has over the past decade overtaken Mumbai as India’s largest airport, so much so that almost half of all Indian air traffic flows through the Indira Gandhi International Airport. Now the new 103-metre tall Air Traffic Control tower, which has been physically ready for a couple of years, is finally set to start operations. This tower that will allow ramp, approach and departure controllers grand sweeping views of the airport should also finally be able to allow simultaneous departures and arrivals on Delhi’s runways. It will also hopefully allow the authorities at the Delhi Airport to get cracking on rapidly improving allied infrastructure as well. The collapse of Jet Airways and the subsequent decline in passenger traffic have eased the congestion at the terminal temporarily but with airlines like IndiGo, Vistara and SpiceJet continuing to expand, adding more domestic and international services out of Delhi, traffic should reach numbers that were there before Jet’s demise by the end of the summer and growth should come back to the market shortly. This means that the Delhi Airport operators will need to get cracking on stalled infrastructure building projects such as a new fourth runway and the two new terminals that have been planned. The fact is that Terminals 1 and 2 are either well past their maximum capacity or too old to continue. They need urgent rebuilding.

This is not just a problem at the Delhi Airport. Across the country, several large aviation infrastructure projects are currently stalled other than at Bengaluru, where work is continuing fast on the new runway. Air travel has transformed India’s economic growth but with aviation infrastructure across the country pushed to its maximum limits with the current infrastructure, the new Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri has a challenge on his hands to ensure that growth does not slow down. New aviation infrastructure such as the new Navi Mumbai, Mopa and Jewar airports have to be built quickly to keep pace. There are other systemic challenges that have to be countered as well, some of them regarding protecting passengers rights and keeping profiteering to a minimum. At the same time the Civil Aviation ministry has to be mindful of the overall health of the Indian airlines. A brand new tall tower might be a nice landmark but the problems around the industry have to be tackled urgently first.