Delhi Airport will operationalise its revamped Terminal 2 starting October 26, 2025 coinciding with the start of Northern Winter 2025 schedule. The revamped terminal is expected to make the Terminal look modern and have amenities like self baggage drop amongst others. T2 is the oldest of the three terminals at Delhi Airport currently and was shut for a long period after the operationalisation of T3, until the revamp of T1 led to scale down of capacity at T1 and subsequent restart of T2 to cater to that traffic. The air traffic grew by leaps and bounds in the meanwhile and as Delhi built a fourth runway, the airport operator looked at T2 as a way to increase its capacity to 100 million passengers a year.
Traditionally, Air India remained under a single roof at Delhi Airport which is its primary hub. Traditionally, Air India was also a government company and remained immune from the terminal shifts which in case of Delhi has seen court battles between the airport operator and the airlines. Even as rival IndiGo, the largest carrier in India by fleet and domestic market share, had to work its way through multi-terminal operations, Air India continued under the single roof at Delhi, Mumbai as well as Bengaluru. All of this is now set to change for the privatised Air India.
Come October 26, 2025; Air India group which now comprises two airlines, Air India and Air India Express will see operations across all three terminals at Delhi Airport.
Terminal 1
The revamped T1 which houses Akasa Air, SpiceJet and IndiGo will see the addition of Air India Express. All flights of Air India Express will move to T1 starting October 26, 2025.
Terminal 2
Select Air India flights will move to T2. 60 out of 180 daily flights, or one-third of total will move to T2 beginning October 26, 2025. The flights have been renumbered with four digits and start with “1”. If you see a flight number as AI-1xxx, your flight is operating from T2. (Eg: AI1357)
T3, International Flights
All International flights of Air India as well as Air India Express will continue to operate from Terminal 3. All other flights of Air India whose flight number does not start with AI-1xxx will operate from T3.
Implications
The implications for the airline include the need for additional staff, additional equipment and increased connection times in some cases. The airline would take care to move flights which have fewer connecting passengers to T2. However, Air India has been placing code on Air India Express flights to help with single ticketing and transfers which will now see higher connection times.
This also has an implication on service levels for Air India, since it has a dedicated lounge at T3 and passengers flying on flights from T2 and having lounge privileges will have to make do with the tie up the airline will have with a lounge within Terminal 2.
Network Thoughts
DIAL, the operator of Delhi Airport, inherited the airport and is not a greenfield facility. In the absence of an inter terminal connection within the sterile zone and rules in India not allowing a passenger to continue onwards without security check, DIAL is constrained with its operations. The only thing that happens now is IndiGo is not the only carrier to have an unfair disadvantage, even Air India group has the same disadvantage. Over the years, the government and airport operator should work towards ensuring that the two large groups viz. Air India and IndiGo have a terminal for themselves at Delhi with each terminal handling its own security, customs and immigration and the smaller players are divided amongst these two terminals. This will immensely help the growth, transfer traffic and streamline operations, not just for the airport but also the airline.
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