‘This is infuriating’: Passengers at Delhi airport complain about long wait times

Arpit Sahni, a tech consultant, said, “ I had an update from the airlines about the chaos and reached the airport two-three hours early Monday morning. The airport was still a mess. I barely made it to my flight. There are old people who get tired but still have to be in lines. We kept asking staffers about the delay but there was no reply. The X-ray machines take so much time. It’s exhausting. I had to attend my friend’s wedding and the journey became a nightmare. Imagine running from the check-in area to the boarding gate in less than 5 minutes. My airline called me and asked me to rush. I was sweating and got worried. We think some people even missed their flights. This is infuriating…”

A senior reporter from a news agency wrote that she missed her morning Bangalore flight because of the rush and had to pay Rs 25,000 for the next flight. “I was sent to the supervisor alongside 10-15 other passengers from my flight who were unnecessarily stopped, and we were told that we should’ve come 4 hours earlier if we wanted to catch this flight. Having no other option, I requested for another flight at the reservation desk where they only gave me an option to book a flight for the next day at an additional cost. They also added a penalty of nearly 4k extra on top of it. I saw all the multiple reservation counters of Air India completely full of people for hours while the single counters at other airlines seemed to have a few people at best. I could also see utter chaos at the security checking at T3, people were shouting at each other and there seemed to be no proper crowd control.” reads the Twitter thread.

Dr Kavita Tiwari, who had to take a flight to Tashkent, said she and almost 50 other medical students waited for three hours in the immigration queue. “ It was an utter mess,” she said.

Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia visited the airport Monday and spoke to DIAL officials about the chaos. He earlier told the media that the ministry is looking into the problems.

Airport officials said they are trying to decongest the airport by reducing the flights but the December rush is difficult to manage because the airport is understaffed.