Lessons for city airport from Gatwick

Mumbai: The Mumbai airport operator wants to use lessons learnt from Gatwick to improve the land-locked airport’s flight handling capacity. Last week, the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) sent a proposal to the Airport Authority of India (AAI) seeking approval for the appointment of a consultant to increase the airport’s capacity.
The move came after a MIAL team returned from an observation tour of Gatwick airport in UK, which handles nearly double the traffic of Mumbai with just one runway. London’s second airport handles around 50 to 60 flights (take-offs and landings) every hour. Mumbai can manage a maximum of 30 operations despite having two runways.
MIAL is awaiting AAI’s nod on the proposal because they jointly run the airport. While the GVK-led private consortium is responsible for building and maintenance of ground infrastructure such as runways, taxiways the AAI handles air navigation.
The move is critical for Mumbai because the once busiest airport of country is losing out on traffic to other metro airports.
29/09/10 Soubhik Mitra/Hindustan Times

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Categories: airports Sep 2010, Foreign Sep 2010, New Sep 2010