Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Airlines brace for 40-day runway repairs

Starting today, flying in and out of Mumbai is going to be a cumbersome affair for over 40 days, with authorities carrying out surface repairs – filling holes and cracks – on the two runways at the city airport.

Airport operator MIAL has worked out a schedule (see box) for the maintenance work. Under the plan, most of the patch work will be done in 4-hour blocks on the main runway. During such time, the shorter secondary airstrip will be put to use.

On nine days between October 18 and November 30, flight operations will come to a grinding halt for five hours on each day when both the runways will be attended to. The city airport has a unique layout with the two runways – main (09-27) and secondary (14-32) – intersecting each other. While the main runway has a length of 3.4 km, the secondary runway is shorter by nearly half a kilometre. This means operations will get hampered when the secondary runway is used. During the above period, the shorter airstrip will be used on 26 days.

Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) has divided the work into two segments. In the first, the main runway will be closed for four hours between noon and 4 pm. In the second part, no take-off or landing will happen for five hours between noon and 5 pm for nine days starting October 31.
18/10/16 Aditya Anand/Mumbai Mirror
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