The soaring Haj and holiday passenger count, evident from the crowded entrance on Monday, has exposed the inadequacies of the city airport. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Ill-equipped Calcutta airport is tottering under the weight of Haj and holiday traffic, triggering chaos in the crowded terminals that have been handling three times the normal traffic over the past five days.

A senior official blamed the sudden surge in traffic for the mess, pointing out that the domestic terminal has been handling around 15,000 fliers on an average every day since last Thursday.

“The normal capacity is around 5,000 passengers a day, though we handle more than that regularly. With Puja and Haj coinciding this year, the rush has been unprecedented,” he said.

On Monday, around 16,000 passengers used the domestic terminal, the highest this festival season. “We usually handle 8,000 to 9,000 passengers on an average, which is also above capacity,” said airport director R. Srinivasan.

If long queues at the entry gates, check-in counters and the security hold weren’t frustrating enough, fliers have been inconvenienced by a shortage of trolleys and chairs.

Sumanta Dey, who returned to Delhi on Monday morning after spending Puja in Calcutta, said the airport resembled Sealdah station. “With only one entry, getting into the terminal itself took a long time. Then there was a serpentine queue to reach the security hold,” complained Dey, whose IndiGo flight was delayed by 40 minutes waiting for passengers to board.

He was not the only one fuming over the airport authorities “not getting their basics right when under pressure”.

Maya Devi, a 70-year-old resident of Park Street booked on a Kingfisher Airlines flight to Mumbai on Saturday, was forced to stand in a queue for 45 minutes for security check despite reaching the airport three hours before the scheduled departure.

“The flight was scheduled to take off at 9.30am but the airline advised passengers to reach the airport three hours early because of the rush. Why was an elderly lady made to stand for so long despite following the instructions?” demanded a relative who had escorted Maya Devi to the airport.

Passengers also complained about inadequate seating arrangements.

“My mother wanted to rest for a while before going for the security check but there was not a single empty chair in sight,” said R. Kumar, booked on an Air India flight to Delhi on Monday.

The five security check-in points at the domestic terminal are proving to be inadequate. Officials claimed that there was no space in the building to increase the number of counters.

With online scanning still not operational, passengers are forced to wait around 40 minutes on an average for frisking and hand baggage X-ray. “The online baggage scanning will be operational only after the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security gives us the green signal,” said airport director Srinivasan.

Such has been the festival rush that even barring the entry of visitors to the terminals — a step usually taken in the run-up to Republic Day and Independence Day on security grounds — has not been of much help.

“Things will improve only when the new integrated terminal is commissioned next year,” said an official of the Airports Authority of India.

Traffic bottlenecks like the Kestopur, Baguiati and Joramandir crossings on VIP Road have added to the woes of fliers. On Monday, nearly 50 passengers missed their flights after being caught in snarls.