Chaos descended on Mumbai airport on Saturday as incessant rains, an emergency landing, and an inoperable main runway caused serial delays of international and domestic flights.
Chaos descended on Mumbai airport on Saturday as incessant rains, an emergency landing, and an inoperable main runway caused serial delays of international and domestic flights.
The main runway of Mumbai airport was closed after a Turkish Airlines plane got stuck in the mud while landing on Friday. It was supposed to have become operational by 5pm Saturday. But heavy rains rendered the retrieval of the aircraft more difficult, keeping the main runway unavailable till 11pm. “Continuous rain is leading to an even more slushy ground, and restricting the movement of machinery,” said a Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) spokesperson. When reports last came in, only the secondary runway was being used. Fliers will have to bear with delays till Sunday morning, said MIAL officials.
If domestic flyers had to put up with delays, flyers of international airlines like Singapore Airlines and Continental Airlines had to deal with flight cancellations.
“Singapore Airlines have rescheduled both their arrivals and departure for Saturday while Continental has cancelled its departure,” said an official from Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL).
This was because these airlines have huge aircraft and they do not use the secondary runway for their operations due to safety reasons. “The secondary runway is not used by these and other international carriers like Qantas and Saudia because of its close proximity to the air traffic control (ATC) tower,” said an ATC official. “We have delayed some of its flights and have had to divert a few flights due to runway closure at Mumbai International Airport,” said a Singapore Airlines official.
The emergency landing of the SpiceJet aircraft is the third such incident at Mumbai airport in the last four days. On Friday, a Turkish Airlines flight, TK970 from Istanbul to Mumbai, veered off the taxiway after landing and is still stuck in mud close to the main runway. And earlier in the week, on August 31, an Air India (AI) Jeddah-Mumbai flight AI 930, with286 people on board, was forced to land under emergency conditions in Mumbai following suspected hydraulic failure.
When reports last came in, most international flights were running late by one-and-a-half to two hours, with the delays expected to get worse later at night, which is when most international departures/arrivals are scheduled.
Ganesh VK (name changed) and his wife reached the Santacruz domestic terminal of Mumbai airport at 12pm on Saturday to catch their Kingfisher flight to Mangalore, IT-143, which was scheduled to leave at 1.45pm. “Now we have been told that the flight will leave at 2.30pm. We had started from our home in Kandivli at 10am so that we could reach here on time. There were terrible traffic jams and now we have to wait here,” said Ganesh, 45.
“We have to attend a marriage function in Mangalore in the evening. Guess we will have to go directly to the venue from the airport.”
What happened?
On September 2, a Turkish Airline Airbus 340-300 veered off the rapid exit taxiway N8 after it landed on the main runway 09-27 of the Mumbai airport. While the airline maintained that the aircraft skidded had skidded because of the excessive rainfall, sources in the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) said that it was because one of the reverse thrusts of the aircraft was malfunctioning. The aircraft remained stuck in the mud near the main runway and national carrier Air India was called in to retrieve it.
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