Mumbai airport operations back to normal, 4 flights delayed

The failure of the new software being tested at the Mumbai airport delayed only four flights this morning and the airport is now back to normal, Air Traffic Control officials said.

"Four departures from Mumbai were delayed by 15-20 minutes and no arrivals were affected. The Auto Track III, the upgraded system went into "degraded mode of operation" from 3.10 am to 5am," joint general manager, Air Traffic Control (Mumbai) G Dasgupta said.

"By 5 am the engineers were called in and the system was switched back to Auto Track II, the previously running system. At the Mumbai airport the Auto Track-III is on trail since a month. Now the airport is back to normal running on the Auto Track-III," Dasgupta said.

US-based Raytheon had recently won the contract to upgrade the Air Traffic Control software and Delhi and Mumbai airports are currently in the process of migrating to the new or upgraded system.

Since it was a lean hour being a Sunday morning and also it was the same time when the airport is shut down for half-an-hour for regular cleaning and maintenance purposes of the runway, the number of flights impacted was limited, according to airport sources.