Planning to catch a flight this summer, think again. Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport will cancel 114 flights daily and reschedule another 86 during a three-month runway closure from June 15 to September 15, airport operator Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) announced on Friday.
The upgrade works on the runway (RW 10/28), which were postponed in May due to congestion issues, will now be carried out from June 15 to September 15. The Instrument Landing System (ILS) will be upgraded to make the runway CAT III compliant, which will allow flight operations at low visibility conditions during the fog season.
The Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), the country’s largest and busiest airport, handles around 1,450 flight movements daily. It has four runways — RW 09/27, RW 11R/29L, RW 11L/29R and RW 10/28 — and two operational terminals — T1 and T3. T2 is currently closed for maintenance works.
The plan, crafted through extensive consultations with airlines and stakeholders, seeks to avoid a recurrence of the widespread disruption caused in April 2025, when insufficient coordination during the same runway maintenance led to significant chaos.
DIAL said that while it has rescheduled 86 flights to non-peak hours, 114 flights (57 arrivals and 57 departures) will be cancelled daily when runway 28/10 undergoes upgradation work to make it CAT-IIIB compliant for the upcoming fog season.
“We are better prepared now for this exercise, and detailed deliberations and stakeholder consultations were held in the last few weeks,” DIAL chief executive officer Videh Kumar Jaipuriar said on Friday, acknowledging that these adjustments were not made previously, which led to the April chaos.
The airport typically handles close to 1,450 flights daily, meaning around 7.8% of all flights will be cancelled on a daily basis, marginally above the typical 3-4% daily flight cancellations. “So this is just marginally above average,” Jaipuriar said.
The plan involves shifting more flights from peak hours to non-peak hours to reduce the possible impact during the closure period. “Earlier, we were seeing only 25-26 flights landing in some off-peak hours,” Jaipuriar said, explaining how better distribution of flight movements will help manage the constraints.
