New Delhi: The shutdown of Delhi Airport Terminal 1 (T1) after the roof collapsed on Friday has affected 22,615 passengers, as said by the Civil Aviation Ministry in a statement on Monday. The statement said that in the balance sheet for passengers on IndiGo (9,431) and SpiceJet (541) flights, a total of 9,972 passengers have already been refunded, while refunds for 196 passengers are outstanding.
Flight operations were cut on the premiership of T1 shutdown at the end of Friday. Nevertheless, efforts to keep the flights running went on seamlessly over the weekend as flights were offloaded to Terminal 2 & Terminal 3 of the airport to prevent more cancellations.
Avinash Raghuram, general manager of operation control, said that the Civil aviation minister Rammohan Naidu visited the Airport Operations Control Centre today, where he met his ministry officials, officials from the DGCA, BCAS, DIAL besides the airline operators. This meeting was called to discuss the station operation and passenger handling measures after the relocation of flight T1 to both T2 & T3.
During the review, interactions were held on functional optimization and the provision of additional human resources to address rising throughput, the aviation ministry explained. The DGCA also gave an update on the creation of war rooms, which was intended to allow for efficient interaction between DIAL and the airline companies. Thus, Naidu urged all parties to increase their discipline in order to maintain the functionality of the transport systems as well as passengers’ safety.
The flying activities from T1 have ceased temporarily due to the roof collapse that happened during the rainfall and blizzard; the incident led to one death and eight cases of injuries. According to the management of DIAL, the primary cause of the failure was attributed to the weather factor, specifically rainfall, and the public was informed of the formation of the technical committee to look into the matter. In regard to the remuneration, DIAL has provided ₹20 lakh to the family of the deceased and ₹3 lakh each to the injured.
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