"The national carrier would be shifting its entire domestic operations from T1A to T3 from November 11," an airline spokesperson said.
Despite facing passengers' wrath over complaints of inconvenience at the new terminal 3 of IGI Airport for the last nine days, Air India today decided to shift its entire domestic operations there from Thursday.
The decision came after civil aviation minister Praful Patel directed the national carrier and the airport operator to take urgent measures to mitigate the grievances of the passengers, most of whom have been facing harassments due to delays in flights or in receiving their checked-in baggage.
"The national carrier would be shifting its entire domestic operations from T1A to T3 from November 11," an airline spokesperson said.
In a bid to provide seamless travel to its passengers across its network, Air India had decided to use T3 as a hub and operated both domestic and international flights from there from October 31.
But the airline, along with Jet Airways and Kingfisher, had to delay shifting of operations due to unpreparedness of the airport operator in providing key facilities like power, water and proper accessibility to the terminal.
Civil aviation secretary M Madhavan Nambiar reviewed the progress last month and decided to postpone the shifting till November 14.
Nambiar will hold a final review meeting in a day or two with all stakeholders before other carriers shift their domestic operations.
Patel, along with Air India CMD Arvind Jadhav and other senior officials from the airlines and the airport, visited the swanky new T3 this evening and assessed the situation, sources said.
Ever since the national carrier shifted 11 of its domestic flights from October 31, its passengers have been facing inordinate delays and have had to wait for hours to get their baggage due lack of adequate number of ground staff.
There have also been instances of protests with passengers raising slogans against Air India and taking over the public address system to shout at the airport and airline authorities.
Air India was scheduled to shift its domestic operations to the new terminal from November 11, while the other two full-service carriers -- Jet Airways and Kingfisher were to do so from November 14.
Air India is facing acute staff crunch to run the operations smoothly, due to which baggage are neither loaded or unloaded on time thus leading to inordinate delays.
The airline blamed the lack of infrastructure at T3 for the problems while the airport authorities accuse Air India of not deploying enough employees.
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