Around 35 special aircraft are moving through the National Capital Region this weekend, and the point of the plan is that most of them should never sit on a commercial stand at Indira Gandhi International. Palam takes the presidents. Noida took the Russian trucks of the sky. Hindon, Jaipur and Lucknow hold overflow. IGI keeps selling tickets. That split is the real aviation product of the 18th BRICS Summit, not the motorcade. If it works, Delhi has a reusable map for the next high-value weekend. If it does not, the city will have learned that four airports sharing one FIR still behave like one bottleneck the moment a VVIP window and a scheduled bank collide.
The assignment sheet was drawn before the first Il-76 arrived. Palam, the military and VVIP side of the Delhi airport complex, reserved up to 12 parking positions for head-of-state metal. Vladimir Putin landed there early on 11 September. Xi Jinping used the same field today. Kazakhstan’s president was booked on the same list. IGI reserved about 12 special bays, six widebody and six narrowbody, for ministers, partner-country delegations and charters that still need a civil terminal. Noida International, which has barely begun passenger life, was given about 12 bays and then used as a logistics field. Three Russian military transports, including an Ilyushin Il-76, touched Jewar around 5.30 a.m. on 10 September with an advance team and stores, the first foreign aircraft on that runway. Hindon offered around 10 stands. Jaipur and Lucknow sat on standby. Safdarjung stayed closed except for named IAF, BSF and NSG helicopters. Rohini Helipad was shut. CISF officials told The Hindu that 70 to 75 percent of participating countries were expected to bring one dedicated aircraft and 10 to 15 percent two. The first special movements began as early as 4 September. September 11 was planned as the heavy arrival day. The system is a parking plan first and a runway plan second.
Airspace is the fence around that parking. From 7 a.m. on 11 September to 11 p.m. on 13 September, non-scheduled operations inside 300 kilometres of Delhi need specific clearance. Scheduled airlines and approved summit flights continue. Climbing traffic must be at Flight Level 290, about 29,000 feet, by 200 kilometres from the city. Descent from that level may begin only at the same distance. Light and microlight aircraft, long-range unmanned vehicles and similar types are barred in the 300-kilometre ring. Drones, hang-gliders, para-motors and short-range recreational flying are barred within 100 kilometres. Flight training organisations in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh cannot even start an engine. Private jets are the traffic that gets squeezed so the published timetable can live. That is the unadvertised cost of keeping T3 open.
What the public record still cannot answer is whether the split actually reduced IGI congestion. Authorities say scheduled arrivals and departures were slipped by 10 to 15 minutes where a VVIP window threatened an overlap, and that an airliner can be held or sent to another field if the windows still collide. Airlines have been told to keep their slots. Dedicated special bays, NSG and SWAT cover, CISF and visiting security teams, and airport anti-drone systems were stood up so a presidential widebody does not occupy a remote stand that a late IndiGo needs. None of those measures has yet been published as a delay scoreboard. There is no official count, as of midday Saturday, of how many special flights sat at Palam versus IGI versus Noida versus Hindon, nor a comparison of on-time performance against a normal September Saturday. The landside risk is clearer than the airside one. Roads to the airport are inside the same security machine as the FIR. Police have run a 9.30 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. traffic cage around Bharat Mandapam, with a tighter evening window, and told passengers to take the Metro. A on-time departure means little if the passenger is still on NH-48 behind a convoy.
The piece that should survive the summit is not the 300-kilometre ban. It is the habit of treating Palam, IGI, Noida and Hindon as one capacity pool. Delhi’s commercial growth has been sold as a two-airport city once Jewar matures. This weekend is the first live proof that a new runway 50-odd kilometres east can take irregular demand, that a military airfield can absorb presidents without closing T3, and that general aviation and flying schools will be the first traffic sacrificed when the capital becomes a controlled zone. After Sunday night the NOTAM expires. The question for AAI, DIAL, NIAL and the IAF is whether a standing playbook remains. Keep a published overflow matrix for summits, elections, Republic Day and disrupted weather. Keep a rule for which aircraft types belong at Palam and which belong on a civil pier. Keep an honest after-action on whether the 10-to-15-minute slips and the Noida logistics stands actually protected the scheduled bank. A multi-airport NCR only exists if the next crisis does not default every special movement back onto IGI’s apron.