Mumbai airport to freeze number of flights in winter season

New Delhi: India’s congested Mumbai airport has put a freeze on additional flights in the upcoming winter season and is now proposing to appoint a consultant to help it increase capacity utilization.
The landlocked Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport of Mumbai slipped to No. 2 when Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi handled some 26.1 million passengers traffic during 2009-10.
The airport has 650 aircraft movements a day and can’t handle more since it plans to close the main runway between 1 November and 1 May every day between 9am and 6pm.
“We are maintaining status quo as per operations in the last season,” said a spokesperson of Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd (Mial), the company that runs the airport. “Last year we reconstructed the secondary runway and closed it for six months. We are now planning to resurface and enhance the main runway with two objectives: The main runway has reached the end of its lifecycle, it was recarpeted some 7-10 years back. Secondly, we want to make it Code-F compliant to allow Airbus A380 operations,” the spokesman said.
Airlines are worried that a runway closure during the peak winter months, which see a lot of foreign tourist traffic, coupled with fog in north India, could throw operations out of gear and, therefore, increase airfares.
15/09/10 Tarun Shukla/Live Mint

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Categories: airports Sep 2010