Delays dog fliers at Mumbai airport

It was a horrible day for passengers at the Mumbai airport as a Turkish Airline (TA) plane veered off the taxiway and remained stuck for hours, delaying flights.

Sheetal Makhija, 35, a housewife from Mumbai, was on her way to Bangalore on Friday to meet her relatives, but she spent over four hours at the airport.  “I booked a ticket on a 8.30am Jet Airways flight to Bangalore. After the security formalities, I was seated in the security hold area when the airline announced that the flight has been rescheduled to leave at 9.30am,” she said, adding that “the airline later announced that the flight has been scheduled to leave at 11.30am and I have no option but to sit there”.

Like Makhija, many people were stranded at the airport for hours. “With all operations being shifted to the secondary runway, there was a queuing up of aircraft, leading to delays,” said an official from the Mumbai Air Traffic Control (ATC).

As the main runway was shut for operations, five flights were diverted to Ahmedabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.  Airlines like Singapore Airlines uses main runway and refused to land on the secondary runway as the runway is in close proximity to the ATC tower.