Delhi airport roof collapse: Aviation minister says war room on duty to ensure refunds

NEW DELHI: Union civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu on Saturday said that a war room has been constituted to ensure refund or alternate flights for passengers affected in the Delhi airport canopy collapse incident.
The minister assured that proactive measures are being taken to ensure such incidents are not repeated.
Naidu expressed his condolences on the loss of life in the incident which occurred Friday at the Delhi Airport Terminal 1.
"The incident that happened at the Delhi airport is very tragic and I offer my condolences to the one individual who lost his life. Some people were injured also in the incident, they have been taken to the hospital and their treatment is underway," the minister said.
"We have taken control of the situation and as soon as the incident was reported, all the emergency response teams including teams of NDRF and CISF immediately went to the spot and engaged in the relief operations to prevent any further damage," he added.
He said passengers would get a guaranteed refund within seven days or alternate flights would be arranged for those who faced flight cancellation.
"For now, Terminal-1 is completely closed and evacuated. All the flight movements have been shifted to Terminal 2 and Terminal 3. For those people whose flights have been canceled, they are being given either a refund or an alternate flight. The civil aviation ministry has decided to pass a circular to provide refunds to the people within seven days," said Naidu.
The civil aviation minister said all the measures are being carried out by officers in the war rooms.
"To ensure this happens, we have set up war rooms at Terminal 2 and Terminal 3. The ministry has released a statement regarding this which has all the numbers. We are taking care of it and have placed one of the officers in the war rooms," he said.
The ministry has also issued a circular to airlines, citing not to increase the fares.
"When such incidents occur, there is an increase in air fares, so we have issued another circular to airlines on not increasing the fare of the tickets and maintaining the prices," said Naidu.
Ensuring such incidents don't occur in the future, the minister said, "We don't want a similar incident to happen again so we have brought in a special team from IIT Delhi's structural engineering department. They will give an initial inspection report. Based on this the necessary action will be taken to stop such incidents."
"Since we don't want such incidents to be repeated, we will ensure getting a structural preliminary inspection done at all airports. We have sought a report from all the airports across the country within 2-5 days, upon which we will see what necessary measures are needed to be taken to prevent such incidents in the future," he further added.
Canopy collapse kills one, injures several
In an alarming incident that led to many red faces, the heavy downpour brought down the canopy at the forecourt of Terminal 1 at IGI Airport early on Friday morning, leaving a cab driver dead and eight people injured.
This threw flights at the terminal into disarray. A bigger tragedy was averted as eyewitnesses said around 100 people were present at the spot when the incident took place.
The canopy had tilted before coming down, which allowed most of the people to escape.
The deceased was identified as Ramesh Kumar (45), who lived with his family at Vijay Vihar in Rohini. He had come to drop a passenger and was about to head home when the incident took place.