A good news has emerged for lakhs of air passengers from India and abroad traveling through Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport. The long wait of passengers going from one terminal to another at the airport is going to end soon. Delhi Airport operator DIAL has given the green signal to India’s first Automated Air Train project to connect various terminals of the airport and Aerocity. After the launch of this very modern and driverless air train, the journey from Terminal 1 (T1) to Terminal 3 (T3) will be completed in just a few minutes. The biggest relief is that this service will be completely free for transit passengers who deboard one flight and board another flight.
₹4,000 crore mega project
Earlier there was a plan to complete this project through a third company (concessionaire), but after things did not work out, now DIAL itself is going to invest a huge investment of ₹ 3,000 crore to ₹ 4,000 crore on this project. According to the airport management, this entire project is targeted to be completed within the next 30 months. The track of this unique air train will be a total of 7.7 kilometers long, in which 5.7 kilometers will be elevated (on pillars) and about 2 kilometers will be prepared on the ground.
Technology will come from abroad
This air train will run completely on computer and sensor based safe technology. The advanced technology and trains used for this can be imported from abroad. For this, the world class systems of South Korea, Jakarta, Italy and Switzerland have been studied in depth. This train will connect mainly 5 major hubs on the route:
- Terminal 1 (T1)
- Terminal 2 (T2)
- Terminal 3 (T3)
- Aerocity
- cargo city
The special thing is that under this project, there is also a proposal to build a skywalk to connect the cargo station to the cargo terminal. Passengers will not have to walk much, so its stations will be built directly near the entry gates of the terminals.
Entry will be available only after scanning the boarding pass.
To use this train, passengers will have to scan their boarding pass at the entry gate. This service will run non-stop between T-1 and T-3 during peak hours to make connectivity between domestic and international flights superfast. At present, Delhi Airport handles more than 7.9 crore passengers annually, the target is to increase it to 11 crore per year. To control this huge crowd, an AI based line management system called Exovis has also been implemented at the airport, which keeps the movement of passengers completely organized.
