Hindon civil terminal to be expanded, no new flights till then: Minister | Noida News

Ghaziabad: Noida International Airport’s launch will not bring the curtains down on the Hindon Civil Terminal. Union civil aviation minister Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu on Wednesday said an additional nine acres will be acquired for the expansion of the civil terminal, which currently uses the runway and ATC of the IAF base, for expanding operations.Naidu admitted, however, that the Hindon terminal has reached saturation, with 21 flights operating to 16 cities, and said no new services will be added until the proposed expansion takes place.Attending an event on Yatri Sewa Diwas at the civil terminal in Ghaziabad, Naidu said the land parcel needed for Hindon’s expansion has been identified and surveyed. “The terminal building will be expanded over 770 sqm and four new check-in counters will be added,” he said. Naidu added that the proposal is progressing at multiple levels involving the state govt, Airports Authority of India (AAI) and other stakeholders. “Services will be upgraded, and expansion will be carried out in a time-bound manner, for which support from the state government and district administration will be needed for land acquisition. For additional parking bays, requests have been sent to IAF for allocating space at the civil terminal,” he said.A terminal inaugurated as a support for Delhi’s IGI in 2019, Hindon has grown from being just a convenient alternative to the congested Delhi airport. It tapped into a vast catchment area in the Delhi-NCR region and surrounding western UP districts. At present, Hindon operates 21 flights. Air India Express connects it to cities including Kolkata, Goa, Jaipur, Chennai, Mumbai and Varanasi. IndiGo runs services to Ahmedabad, Indore and Patna, among others, while Star Air and FlyBig operate regional routes. Naidu said when the terminal became operational five years ago, it handled just one flight. “Today, operations have grown manifold, which was initially a surprise for us. The terminal has huge potential and will be developed accordingly,” he said. Naidu, however, acknowledged that constraints such as the dawn-to-dusk flight rule and only two parking bays have led to frequent delays and cancellations. Designed to handle 300 passengers per hour, the facility’s capacity has been stretched to 500 leading to frequent flight cancellations, especially after IndiGo and Air India Express started operations of overlapping flights within short intervals.