Platinum Airways

Our Destination of the Week challenge features a new destination airport on a weekly basis. Every week we get to fly to a remote or a big commercial airport, depending on the monthly theme. Although there are multiple airports in the theme, each one is a separate destination and not linked in any way other than the common theme.

The Rules:

1. Depart in the aircraft of your choice from the airport of your choice, anywhere in the world (as long as you respect maximum flight hours). Consider this a new "cold start" flight.
2. Fly to the Destination of the Week airport.
3. On completion of the flight, go to the PIREP page and file your flight as a DOTW mission. There is no flight tracking software involved. This is purely a fun exercise. Enjoy!

Welcome to our Legacy Destinations of the Week!

As our president, Stijn, announced in our March 2020 Newsletter our Destination of the Week officially comes to a close after 500 weeks of running. This means that we are now in DOTW ReRun mode. The original thought was to start with the very first DOTW, HUEN, however we had to consider DOTW theme timing. Some DOTW's are seasonal or calendar themed while others are holiday themed.

We want to thank Stijn for his DOTW creative efforts. The DOTW series has been a masterful effort on his part and unarguably one of our most successful programs here at Platinum Airways.

Stijn, if you live to be 100 years old, that will be 10% of your life dedicated to Platinum Airways. We can never thank you enough!

Fourwomenbanner

Hello and welcome to our final DOTW series for the year. One of our Platinum pilots suggested the theme, and there is indeed no better way to end the year than by paying tribute to four women whose memories live on in four airports that have been named after them.

VIDPp01 Hello and welcome to our Four Women DOTW that will see out 2014. This week, we'll be visiting India's busiest airport that was named after its arguably most famous prime minister. Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (née Nehru) was the third prime minister of India and a central figure of the (socialist) Indian National Congress party. Gandhi, who served from 1966 to 1977 and then again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, is the second longest serving prime minister of India and the only woman to hold the office. Indira Gandhi was the only child of Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. She served as the chief of staff of her father's highly centralised administration between 1947 and 1964 and came to wield considerable unofficial influence in government. Elected Congress President in 1959, she was offered the premiership in succession to her father. Gandhi refused and instead chose to become a cabinet minister in the government. She finally consented to become prime minister in succession to Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966.

Gandhi was known for her political ruthlessness and unprecedented centralisation of power. She went to war with Pakistan in support of the independence movement and war of independence in East Pakistan, which resulted in an Indian victory and the creation of Bangladesh, as well as increasing India's influence to the point where it became the regional hegemon of South Asia. Gandhi also presided over a state of emergency from 1975 to 1977 during which she ruled by decree and made lasting changes to the constitution of India. She was assassinated in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star.

Her younger son Sanjay had initially been her chosen heir; but after his death in a flying accident in 1980, Indira persuaded her reluctant elder son Rajiv Gandhi to quit his job as a pilot and enter politics in 1981. Over a decade later, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated.

Indira Gandhi International Airport

VIDPp02 Indira Gandhi International Airport (VIDP) is the primary international airport of the National Capital Region of Delhi, India, situated in Palam, 16 km (9.9 mi) from New Delhi city centre. It is the busiest airport in India. With the commencement of operations at the new Terminal 3, it became India's and South Asia's largest aviation hub, with a current capacity of handling more than 46 million passengers. It was previously operated by the Indian Air Force before its management was transferred to the Airports Authority of India. In May 2006, the management of the airport was passed over to Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), a consortium led by the GMR Group.

VIDPp07 In 2011–12, the airport handled 35.88 million passengers and the planned expansion program will increase its capacity to handle 100 million passengers by 2030. The new Terminal 3 building has had the capacity to handle an additional 34 million passengers annually since the start of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Terminal 3 is the world's 8th largest passenger terminal. In 2010, IGIA was conferred the fourth best airport award in the world in the 15–25 million category, and Best Improved Airport in the Asia-Pacific Region by Airports Council International. In years 2012,2013 and 2014, the IGIA was ranked the second-best airport in the world in the 25–40 million passengers category, again by Airports Council International. Also in 2011 (the last year that full statistics from ACI are available), the airport was the 34th busiest in the world with 34,729,467 passengers handled, registering a 17.8% growth in traffic over the previous year. The airport uses an advanced system called Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) to help keep takeoffs and landings timely and predictable.

VIDPp03 Safdarjung Airport was built in 1930 and was the main airport for Delhi until 1962. Due to increasing passenger traffic at Safdarjung, civilian operations were moved to Palam Airport (later renamed to IGIA) in 1962. Palam Airport had been built during World War II as RAF Station Palam and after the British left, it served as an Air Force Station for the Indian Air Force.

Palam Airport had a peak capacity of around 1,300 passengers per hour. Owing to an increase in air traffic in the 1970s, an additional terminal with nearly four times the area of the old Palam terminal was constructed. With the inauguration of a new international terminal (Terminal 2), in 1986, the airport was renamed as Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA).

VIDPp06 The old airport terminal is now known as Terminal 1 and handles domestic flights for all budget airlines. The terminal is divided into three separate terminals – 1A (for domestic flights of state owned Air India[dubious – discuss] and GoAir), 1B (was used by other domestic airlines, now closed and demolished), the Domestic Arrival Terminal (1C) and the newly constructed 1D (now used by all remaining domestic airlines). There is also a separate Technical Area for VVIP passengers. Additionally, there is a separate terminal for Hajj flights.

Owing to the booming Indian aviation industry and the entry of numerous low-cost private carriers, the airport saw a huge jump in passenger traffic and has failed to cope with the demand. The capacity of Terminal 1 is estimated to be 7.15 million passengers per annum. However, the actual throughput for 2005/06 was an estimated 10.4 million passengers. Including the international terminal (Terminal 2), the airport has a total capacity of 12.5 million passengers per year, whereas the total passenger traffic in 2006/07 was 16.5 million passengers per year In 2008, total passenger count at the airport reached 23.97 million.

VIDPp05

VIDP has four runways:
09 / 27   9,239ft / 2816m   Asphalt
10 / 28   12,510ft / 3813m   Asphalt
11R / 29L   14,535ft / 4430m   Asphalt
11L / 29R   14,436ft / 4400m   Asphalt
Elevation   237m / 777ft

Live flight tracking is available from Flightaware.

VIDP charts are available here.

Freeware scenery for FS9 can be found here.

Freeware scenery for FSX & P3Dv1 through 4 can be found here.

Freeware scenery for MSFS 2020 can be found here.

Freeware scenery for P3Dv5 could not be found.

Freeware scenery for X-Plane 9 could not be found.

Freeware scenery for X-Plane 10 could not be found.

Freeware scenery for X-Plane 11 & 12 can be found here.

Walking inside Indira Gandhi International Airport