The weather was fine and the gadgets were functioning properly but about 20 flights were delayed by 15 minutes on an average on Sunday morning as the airport infrastructure could not cope with the festive rush of passengers.

The number of fliers in the domestic terminal forced the airport authorities to stop entry of visitors into the building for around half an hour.

“Sunday’s passenger rush was more than what was seen in the last few festive seasons. Most flights went full,” said an airport official. There were long queues at the entrance to the departure terminal, baggage X-ray counters, passenger entry point, airline check-in counters and security check counters.

“The number of check-in counters and X-ray machines have been increased. But the rush caused the delay,” added the official.

“Most of the passengers had come to Calcutta for Durga puja and are returning to their cities. The rush will continue for the next couple of days,” said Anil Punjabi, the chairman (east) of the Travel Agents Federation of India.

The space inside the domestic terminal has increased since last year but still proved inadequate for passengers and those seeing them off on Sunday morning.

“There was no place to sit and the queues for X-ray and security check were moving very slowly,” said Anirban Mukherjee, who flew to Mumbai on a no-frills carrier.

Airline officials said seats on flights to the other metros and the Northeast were most in demand.

“There were no vacant seats on the flights to Delhi and Mumbai. Those for Chennai, Bangalore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Guwahati and Silchar were nearly full,” said an Air India spokesperson.

A recent survey by the Airports Authority of India revealed that the rate of growth of fliers to and from Calcutta has dipped in the last two months because of rising airfare.

In the past three years, footfall at the airport grew by 20-25 per cent in the first four months of the financial year. During the same period this year, the increase has been 8-10 per cent.