Starting from April, you can expect to see a shorter journey time listed on the tickets of domestic flights that are to be landing at Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. The flight duration is to be reduced by 5-15 minutes by the flights, which is an attempt to reduce the air congestion at airports and to improve the slot discipline at the respective airports.
With this initiative, the 5-15 minutes buffer against delays would be reduced, and you would no more hear much about early flight arrivals at these destinations. This can also help in avoiding congestion in the airports.
This action plan was adopted by the civil aviation ministry to match the landing/takeoff time slots and the block times. Block time, which is the time from when the flight leaves the departure gate till it lands at the destination gate, has been inflated by the airlines to boost up their punctuality records. This, in turn, has led to a slot indiscipline in the recent past, as per a report by the Airports Authority of India (AAI).
With this new initiative by the civil aviation ministry, let’s now hope that the airports get less congested, and the flights arrive at the scheduled time, rather than arriving much earlier than expected.
