Yaatri

1. If they were damaged during installation, why were they not replaced immediately? If they were damaged after installation, w as it vandalism, which means inadequate security. If they were damaged during work following installation, it's quite sloppy.
2. Outlets are difficult to find at most airports, except in lounges or charging stations, where they are provided.
3. I avoid bus rides between airports. The one time I had to transfer from LGW to LHR, it was quite smooth. It was quite a few years ago though. If transfer between domestic and international is like that, I would be satisfied.
4. Some people with blinders are still in denial. It seems pointing out deficiency is sensationalism. Maybe their self esteem depends on denying any criticism of the new Terminal.

Yaatri

Suit yourself. There is no law against being in denial.

Keyser

i guess the real question now is how long will it take them to sort out all these issues....

BlrGuy

Likewise

Yaatri

Please read what has been posted since your last post. In other words Wake UP!! Smell the coffee!!.

Keyser

come on guys....let it go....

abhilife2001

+1 ..

oliver2002

I used to love the convenience of MUC-LH-DEL-9W-CCU, arriving in T2 in the morning with no rush on immigration and getting to T1 after the morning rush to continue on to CCU. Now my stomach is cringing at the thought of a T3-T1 transfer with aprox 2h between flights.

BlrGuy

Ah, let him be. The fellow just wanted the last word

Keyser

don't we all????

aniruddh77

The philosophy is almost emotionally choking me ;-)

Yaatri

Duplicate

Yaatri

DFW DL

Outbound DEL-LHR BA 256 (First Class)

Arrived at the airport at about 0615 for an 0815 departure. As per usual idiotic Indian police procedure, beautiful 4-lane entry road is constricted to a single lane for useless secuirity check. Normal cars relegated to the outside lane of dropoff zone; inner zones for taxis and VIPs. Airline sropoff zones clearly marked with all international airlines at the far end. Plenty of free baggage carts available.

Usual entry drill (show itinerary and ID to CISF guard). Monitors inside the door direct pax to check-in zones for each flight, which are clearly marked (this part of the terminal is very much like BKK or HKG). BA check-in was very smooth; agents apologized for the lounge not being ready and gave me a letter from the BA station chief also apologizing for this.

Next step was immigration...quite a few desks, about half od which were manned at 0700. If there was a Fast Track for J/F pax I did not see it. Cleared through in about 5 minutes to security. Because of the regular flow from immigration, the security wait was minimal. Unless the number of stations manned gets out of whack, there shouldn't ever be too long of a wait for security, which is a big improvement over T2.

Security was the same drill as T2...Xray, magnetometer, manual pat down. They have talked about getting full body scanners but I didn't see any. Usual drill of getting the stamp from security on your carryon bag tags.

Immediately after security there is duty free. Usual assortment of booze, smokes, potions and lotions. They are in the process of putting in a nice cigar room (Havanas) and a premium Scotch whisky area. For those who don't know, Delhi has some of the best duty free prices on booze and smokes anywhere in the world.

Exiting duty free, one enters the main terminal area. Directly in front is the Smoke House Cafe, run by the purveyors of South Delhi's excellent Smoke House Grill. This by itself represents a 1000% improvement over the F&B offerings at T2 airside. There is also a large Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (the temporary BA lounge) and a Choko-La on the ground level, as well as several brand-name retail outlets (not all of these are open yet).

The lounges are on the upper level. The Kingfisher Lounge, which apparently will serve all the oneworld airlines, is scheduled to open in mid-August. The ITC Green Lounge and the Plaza Premium Lounge are open for business. The latter looks like a pay-in facility, which the former is a much improved successor to the old ITC Welcomgroup Lounge in T2. Much has been learned from the BLR airport experience - the ITC lounge has a power outlet at every seat.

Also on the upper level is the food court, which features a McDonald's (sadly no actual burgers yet...India has a ways to go in that regards), Domino's Pizza, assorted Indian restaurants (Curry Kitchen, Idli.com, and the curiously named "Four Fingers"), Noodle Wok, and a multi-cuisine restaurant called Connexions. Not all of these were open yet. There was also a smoker's lounge on the upper level.

As one walks from the terminal area to the departure concourses, there is a sign for the airport hotel, although it wasn't clear if that was open yet. It is supposed to have 60 rooms, which unless they screw up the management somehow it should be sold out every night.

The international piers are to the right side of the terminal building. Upon entering the pier, my first impression was the spaciousness...in fact, it was more like "look at all this wasted space". I am sure that will change over time as DIAL figures out that they can sell concession space in the departure piers (indeed, a coffee shop or two might be in order...the piers are very long), but for now, things are nice and uncrowded. There is an enormous Buddha statue at the entrance which was a favorite spot for picture taking among the departing pax.

Gates 1-14 are to the right and 15-26 are to the left. My deaprture gate was 7 so I had to hike about halfway out the right hand pier...an advertised walk of 20 minutes from security. The well-designed moving walkways (one exit per gate) allowed my to make it in less than half that time. Caveat - the walkways only move in one direction, so any hike back in to the terminal will take twice as long.

Curiously, the piers are carpeted rather than tiled, which makes hauling rollaboards a little more difficult and sets them up for a long term maintenance challenge. The color scheme is a light gold, which with the ample ambient light makes ther piers seem even more light and open.

Gates 1-3 have enclosed waiting lounges and these will be used for flights to the USA and other destinations with secondary security screening requirements. The rest of the gates are open, and a few look like they are bus gates rather than aerobridges.

Boarding was via two down ramps and a long corridor. Nothing really of interest to report about the boarding process...it's still India, after all.

In general, there were a few fit and finish issues still being worked out. Some cracked floor tiles upstairs in the food court, some water leakage from the ceiling, and still a lot of shops yet to open. But for two days after opening, a pretty good start.

DFW DL

Inbound ORD-DEL AA 292 (First Class)

Landed about 15 minutes early after one or two laps in the pattern due to some really bad weather over J&K. Had a relatively short taxi but then had to wait about 25 minutes for the gate to open up...that's the downside of have three dedicated gates for US-bound flights. Finally pulled into Gate 1 ten minutes past scheduled 2030 arrival time.

Deplaning is a much shorter process then boarding...the aerobridges are aligned to the arrivals level so once you are out of the aerobridge you turn right and are in the stream to the arrivals hall. There was one segment of moving walkway which ended at the entry to the arrivals terminal.

A word about transfers, which was one of the original points of contention of this thread. I observed a clearly marked transfer area just at the end of the walkway and before going down the escalator to Immigration. The area had a CISF security checkpoint, what appeared to be a check-in desk, and plenty of seating. I can't say for sure if there were drinking water or restroom facilties, but it looked like a heck of an improvement from T2's transfer facilities.

In any case, I wasn't transferring, so I went down one of the the twin escalators to immigration. Once again, a lot more desks than in T2, including special lines for J/F pax, VIPs, PIOs, and SAARC residents. As it happens we had arrived at the same time at the CO flight from EWR so the J/F queues were already full so we went further down to a normal queue with only one person in it and were through in 5 minutes (there were three of us traveling on the return leg).

Arrival duty free was immediately after immigration...much larger selection than in T2 but not as good as on departure. We picked up our limit of booze and were done shopping very quickly as there were twice as many cash registers as there were in the T2 arrival duty free.

The arrivals hall is huge and fairly well lit, and compared to T2, airy (there were a few sections of 8-foot low ceilings but most of it was 20+ foot). There were two sets of clean restrooms at either end (the domestic part hadn't been segregrated from the international part yet). In addition to the baggage service and ground transport desks, there were also currency exchange and at least one functional Citibank ATM (they appear to be installing more).

Baggage handling was a little slower than at T2 but I am sure that they are getting used to the new equipment. The first premium bags started coming off within 20 minutes of gate arrival and we had 5 of our 6 bags within 15 minutes after that. However the tag had come off of our last bag and it showed up about an hour after the first bags; by the time we reached home it was more than two hours after arrival. This is as long as it has taken since they started to do the imporvement work.

One systemic problem is with the baggage belts, which stopped for no reason two or three times during the delivery process. Newspaper reports have attributed this to pax pushing the emergency stop buttons, and there are indeed a lot of buttons so I can believe it. The other problem is that DIAL has installed a fancy European system that halts bage delivery to the carousel if there is already a bag there, rather than dropping a second bag on top of the first. Unfortunately, there is something on the carousel that causes bags to stick at exactly this point, requiring somebody to shove them along to resume bag delivery. At most airports, they would have stationed a baggage service person there to do this, but DIAL hasn't figured this out yet. This added at least 30 minutes to the baggage delivery process.

Upon exiting the arrival terminal there is the customary mass of humanity, relocated to the outside of the building. My drivers had elected to park in the very nice multi-story car park, but that required a 10-minute sweaty hike with the baggage carts as the car park is at the domestic end of the terminal (and the passage there is not air conditioned). We were able to load curbside on the 4th level of the garage, pay and depart smoothly...until my driver turned the wrong way and took is back through arrivals.

(FYI, the price for parking has gone way up, and is in line with what you would pay at most major airports around the world).

For who knows what reason, the police were not allowing cars to stop and pick up people even in the outer lanes of arrivals. This led to hundreds of cars being illegally double and triple parked just past the arrivals area, with dazed pax and pedestrians wandering through the sea of cars. It took several minutes for us to clear this mess and get back on the road to the exit. Naturally, the beautiful 4-lane exit road was also blocked off for the useless secuirity check.

All in all, which the T3 departure experience promises to be a lot better than T2, the arrivals experience is pretty much the same.