ET Explains: Why airlines do not deboard passengers when there is delay on tarmac

Delhi Airport had one of its worst disruptions on Sunday with multiple flights getting diverted.

Delhi being the main hub for four airlines, it had an impact across the network with more than 500 flights getting delayed, sources said.

Operations at the airport, which is India's busiest in terms of footfall, has been severely impacted this winter as it has been unable to restart runway 28/10 which has been closed since September. The original plan of reopening the runway in the last week of December has been postponed twice.


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As a result, the airport has been left with only a single runway- 29/11 capable of handling operations when visibility falls below 200 metre.

On Sunday, multiple passengers boarded aircraft only to wait endlessly inside as there was no permission to take off.

Passengers of AI-185 to Vienna, waited for nine hours inside the plane after which the flight was cancelled.

So why doesn’t the airline allow passengers to deplane during such delay? Blame it on multiple factors like complicated rules which makes deboarding of passenger time consuming, a cut throat business which forces airlines to jam multiple flights in a thin time slot and infrastructure crunch at airports.

An aircraft enters the take-off queue on a first-come-first-serve basis. The aircraft gets a departure sequence only when it has closed its door after boarding passengers.

“Once I close the doors, I am in queue. During extreme foggy days when schedules have been disrupted, there can be 100 planes in the queue. If I return to the gate I lose the sequence and delay my passenger even more,” said a pilot of a private airline.

Airline officials say that there needs to be a change in this process. He suggested that the departure sequence number should be given based on the scheduled time of departure and not boarding status. " If an airline misses the sequence, once fog clears, put them at the bottom of the list,” says an executive of a private airline.

Second, even if the passengers are disembarked, they have to go back into the arrival terminal and pass again through the security enclosure as CISF doesn't allow reverse entry.

Airlines don’t like to take that pain. “ It takes a lot of time again, forcing further delay. Why should passengers have to undergo security again? They should wait directly at the gate and board again through the aerobridge or bus,” the executive quoted above said.

A senior CISF official said that reverse entry for passengers can be a security risk.

“The security hold of the airport is a highly sterilised zone. The airside has ground handling staff, construction workers. Once the passenger disembarks anything can be exchanged between the aircraft and the boarding gate. Hence, we have reservations about this. Airlines should make their contingency plan in case of extraordinary delay,” he said.

For instance, in US airlines must disembark passengers if the delay on tarmac is beyond four hours.

But there is a considerable doubt whether airports terminals will have space for passengers if airlines disembark them.

"Terminal 2 of Delhi Airport. During peak hours, it handles more passengers than its structural capacity. There will be chaos inside if disembarked passengers come in," an airport executive said.

Government officials said that they were working on the feasibility to build zones where disembarking passengers can wait without having to go back inside the terminal.