Yesterday, I put out an announcement about GoAir’s movement to Terminal 1B with immediate effect. At that time, reader bd chimed in about the impeding demolition of Terminal 1A.
It turns out, there is indeed movement happening for Air India as well. Just this morning, Air India put out a notice on their website, where they have announced the move to Terminal 2 with effect from October 1, 2015.
The transition will begin with the departure of Air India AI-627 flight to Nagpur at 5.55 am and the arrival of flight AI-695 from Hyderabad at 7:45am. This does mean that Air India passengers will now be able to seamlessly connect between domestic and international flights without having to budget for a 30-45 connection time between both the airport terminals and the associated hassles of transferring between terminals.
As an aside, Air India’s own lounges will shut down at Terminal 1A, and I don’t think they have an opportunity to build their own lounges at Terminal 2, so lounge access is a developing story. Last I visited the domestic level of Terminal 2, they had a temporary Clipper Lounge there, but very bare bones. I’m wondering whether the airport operator has completed their own lounge at this airport yet.
Apparently, GoAir was supposed to move to Terminal 2 in the current phase as well, but they found the cost of operations at Terminal 2 to be very high for their comfort. Ultimately, they will have to move to Terminal 2 at some point of time this year or the next. Jet Airways is now slated to move operations tentatively to Terminal 2 in February 2016 as well.
Readers, watch out for the move and be sure to arrive ahead for your Air India flights from October 1, 2015 onwards at Mumbai to make sure you account for teething issues.
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I hope moving to Terminal 2 will allow Jet to consolidate and eventually build an exclusive, high quality lounge. For Jet to not have an exclusive 9W branded lounge at their hub, in their home country is very shabby. I don’t think we would get something like the 9W Brusseles lounge, but it would be hard to not do better than the current Clipper/Carnation stuff.
But I’m not very optimistic and realistically expect to be shoved into an airport run lounge with all the other people from Vistara and AI. For some reason lounges are not taken seriously in India at all.