Plane to miss slot if delayed

Jul 21, 2010 - Age Correspondent |

New Delhi

If airlines default on timely take-off of flights, passengers could soon face severe flight delays. The government has now ordered the implementation, in phases, of an earlier DGCA order that stipulated that if an aircraft failed to avail of its flight slot on time, the Air Traffic Control (ATC) will only give it permission to take-off based on

availability of vacant slots. This will be the case if the delay is on account of the airline. Sources said that implementation has now started at Mumbai with introduction of the new system likely at other airports soon. Sources said that the take-off of several flights were delayed at Mumbai on Monday from between 30 to 90 minutes after the ATC gave the flights alternate slots once the flights had failed to take-off on time.
Till now, if a flight failed to take-off on time because of delay on part of the airline, the ATC would still give it priority for take-off at the earliest opportunity. But that will not be the case now. The ATC will now give the flight permission to take-off only when an alternate slot is identified and given. Some of the airlines like Kingfisher have already started closing their check-in counters and boarding gates earlier at some of the airports to ensure that flights take-off on time and that their is no delay on the part of the airline.
In a statement issued, Kingfisher stated, “With effect from midnight today (July 20), the check-in counters for all domestic flights of Kingfisher Airlines departing from the six (metro) cities of Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai will now close 40 minutes before departure (instead of the earlier 30 minutes). This effectively means that our check-in counters will close 10 minutes earlier than they used to.”
Kingfisher further added, “It is therefore imperative that all guests arrive at the airport well in time to check-in, proceed for security checks and arrive at their boarding gate in time. All our guests are being notified immediately of this change via SMS messages.”

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