MUMBAI: Four airlines—Go First, AirAsia India, TruJet and Star Air—are likely to move their domestic operations to Vile Parle’s Terminal 1 from October 20.
Sources said the matter was still under discussion and approvals to restart flights from Terminal 1 are not in place yet. A Mumbai airport spokesperson said the operations will be moved post approvals.
Currently, all flights, domestic and international, are operated from Mumbai airport’s Terminal 2 in Sahar, Andheri. Terminal 1 (T1) was shut in the last week of March last year when the lockdown began. When domestic flights resumed on May 25 last year, all operations were moved to Sahar in order to follow the Covid-related safety protocols and social distancing. Then again, flight operations were severely curtailed and passenger traffic was low, so to keep the costs low, only one terminal—T2-Sahar, that is—was kept operational. In the latter half of the year though, as Covid cases declined, passenger confidence increased and air travel picked up.
To keep up with increasing demand, on March 10 this year, select flights of IndiGo and all flights of Go Air, Star Air, Air Asia and TruJet were moved to T1-Parle, while Air India, Vistara and SpiceJet continued to operate from T2-Sahar. T1 had 38 check-in counters operational and apart from this, eight common use self service (CUSS) kiosks were made available on the curbside of the terminal to enable passengers to complete their check-in process without direct interaction with airport personnel.
But then, the second Covid-19 wave hit and passenger traffic dipped and from April 21 all flights were once again moved to T2-Sahar.
