Airport jam may continue for over two months

Mumbai: As the year draws to a close and another holiday season approaches, flyers are facing another round of major flight delays. Several flights are taking off up to an hour, or even two hours, later than scheduled. The phenomenon is not limited to Mumbai, with a cascading effect taking it across several cities.
The delays are expected to continue for over two months, with winter fog in several cities expected to lift only in February and runway repairs in Mumbai ending in June.
Travel industry insiders say that flyers across India should plan in such a way that they expect to arrive at destinations around two hours late. If a couple of buffer hours are factored into plans it may help reduce anxiety, at least at the landing point.
Presently, crowds of stranded flyers are a common sight at airports. Some flyers find themselves sitting in a stationary aircraft for long periods without the air-conditioner turned on, others spend time looking for seats inside the terminal building. With seats already occupied by other delayed flyers, it is not unusual to see even the stairs occupied.
On November 27, a Kingfisher flight from Goa to Mumbai, which was supposed to take off at 5 pm, was delayed by more than two hours. At 6.30 pm, the airline informed the passengers that the flight had just left Mumbai for Goa. It finally took off from Goa at 7.30 pm.
02/12/10 Times of India

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Categories: Airports Dec 2010