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Union Minister for Civil Aviation Shri Ram Mohan Naidu flagged off the scaled-up phase of India's transshipment cargo reform at the Transshipment Excellence Centre of Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), at Terminal 2 of IGI Airport.
The proof of concept for domestic-to-international transshipment began on 20 June 2026 on the Chennai-Delhi-Frankfurt sector with Air India operating end to end; it moved 280 MT of cargo, cut average end-to-end transit time from 60 hours to 20 hours and lifted aircraft capacity utilisation from 75% to nearly 100%.
The network was expanded to four more domestic origin stations — Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Hyderabad — and two new international destinations, London and Copenhagen; Air India's monthly cargo carriage on these lanes is projected to rise from 1,763 MT to 3,183 MT, an increase of nearly 80%.
Transshipment cargo is freight that lands at an airport not because it belongs there but because it is changing aircraft on the way somewhere else. A consignment leaving Chennai for Frankfurt via Delhi spends only a few hours in Delhi, and never enters the Indian market. Security rules, however, had treated it as fresh cargo on arrival: it had to be screened again before it could be loaded onto the onward flight. That re-screening meant unloading, queueing at a screening machine, and re-securing — the reason a Chennai-Frankfurt consignment took about 60 hours end to end. The reform accepts the screening already done at origin, keeps the cargo inside a sealed and monitored Transfer Cargo Security Hold Area so the chain of custody is never broken, and moves it straight to the onward aircraft. The security is preserved by the integrity of the secure area rather than by repeating the scan, which is how mature hub airports operate. Cutting transit to about 20 hours is what makes an Indian airport competitive as a transfer point against Dubai, Doha or Singapore — those hubs win freight on connection time, not on distance.
Simple Analogy: It is the difference between a transit passenger who stays airside and one who is made to clear immigration, collect their bag and check in again for a flight leaving in two hours.
The regulatory authority for civil aviation security in India — it lays down security standards and measures for civil flights at Indian airports, and it issued the AVSEC circular addendum that made this reform legally possible. Set up as a cell within the DGCA in January 1978 after the September 1976 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight, it was reorganised into an independent department under the Ministry of Civil Aviation on 1 April 1987 following the June 1985 Kanishka bombing.
The regulatory body for civil aviation SAFETY — aircraft airworthiness, licensing of personnel, air transport services and airspace regulation — under the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The distinction from BCAS is the one exams test: DGCA does safety, BCAS does security.
The statutory body that manages and develops the country's airports and provides air navigation services. It came into existence on 1 April 1995 through the merger of the International Airports Authority of India (1972) and the National Airports Authority (1986), under the Airports Authority of India Act, 1994. Its Chairman, Shri Vipin Kumar, attended the event.
The joint-venture concessionaire that operates Indira Gandhi International Airport, led by the GMR Group with the Airports Authority of India as a partner. It runs the Transshipment Excellence Centre at Terminal 2 where the reform is anchored; IGI is India's largest air cargo gateway.
Launched by the Prime Minister on 17 September 2022 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, to cut India's logistics cost from about 13-14% of GDP towards 8%, by working on soft infrastructure, digitisation, skilling and regulatory reform.
Key: Its instruments include the Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP) and the Ease of Logistics Services (E-Logs) portal; it is designed to sit alongside the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, which handles the hard infrastructure side.
A digital platform bringing infrastructure ministries onto a common geospatial map so that road, rail, port and airport projects are planned together rather than in sequence.
Key: The National Logistics Policy is the soft-infrastructure complement to it — the pairing is a standard exam distinction.
Launched in August 2020 by the Ministry of Civil Aviation to move perishable agricultural produce by air on national and international routes and improve farmers' value realisation.
Key: Krishi UDAN 2.0, announced on 27 October 2021, focuses on hilly, North Eastern and tribal areas, covering 25 airports in those regions besides 33 elsewhere, with full waiver of landing, parking, terminal navigation and route navigation charges for participating domestic airlines and the E-KUSHAL platform for coordination.
A single-window electronic platform connecting airports, ground handlers, transporters, freight forwarders, customs brokers, airlines, exporters and importers and Customs, so that data is entered once rather than at every handover.
Key: It has been implemented at several of India's largest cargo airports and interfaces with the Indian Customs single window — the digital counterpart to the physical reform announced here.
The release positions this as the cargo counterpart to the hub-and-spoke consolidation already pursued for passengers: feed traffic from many domestic spokes into one large airport, then fly the long international leg from there. The same geography argument applies — India sits between East and West on the trunk routes.
India's logistics cost has been estimated at roughly 13-14% of GDP against a National Logistics Policy target of about 8%. Every hour cut from a transfer and every point of aircraft utilisation gained is part of closing that gap; this is where an airport security circular becomes an economics story.
The bottleneck here was not a tax or a tariff but a security procedure. It is a good illustration of the ease-of-doing-business argument that non-tariff, procedural requirements can cost trade more than duties do — and that the fix is usually a redesign of the process rather than an abandonment of the standard.
GS Paper 3 > Infrastructure: Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways; Ease of Doing Business
General Awareness > Economy and Infrastructure Policy
General Awareness > Government Schemes and Economic Reforms
Aviation regulators and the National Logistics Policy targets recur across UPSC Prelims, banking General Awareness and SSC papers; specific cargo tonnage figures rarely do.
Freight that changes aircraft at an intermediate airport without entering that country's market, on its way from origin to final destination.
A dedicated secure area through which already-screened transshipment cargo can move without re-screening, keeping the chain of custody intact.
Bureau of Civil Aviation Security — India's civil aviation SECURITY regulator, an independent department under the Ministry of Civil Aviation since 1 April 1987.
Directorate General of Civil Aviation — the civil aviation SAFETY regulator, covering airworthiness, licensing and air transport services.
Launched 17 September 2022 to cut logistics cost from about 13-14% of GDP towards 8%, using instruments such as ULIP and E-Logs alongside PM GatiShakti.