The inconvenience created by the infrastructure work at Mumbai airport is making the airlines lose money both on ground and in the air. Since the runway repair work started in October, the airlines have been severely affected. While the ground congestion is delaying departure of flights by an hour thereby affecting their on time performance (OTP), arriving flights held up in the air for 15-20 minutes during peak hours leads to burning of fuel up to Rs1 lakh a day.
The closure of secondary runway 14-32 and lack of enough taxiways have brought down the airlines' OTP in the past month. "The OTP has gone down to 75% in October from 82.9% in September,” said an official from Air India.
"Especially in the evenings between 9.30pm to 11.30pm, the arriving flights have to hold up in the sky for 15-20 minutes. At times it extends to even 45 minutes. While a small aircraft like Airbus 320 burns fuel worth Rs40,000-Rs60,000 in 20 minutes, bigger aircrafts like Boeing 777 or 747 waste Rs1 lakh worth of fuel," said a senior commander from Jet Airways.
A source in the air traffic control (ATC) said: "According to Airport Authority of India, 30 flights (20 departures and 10 arrivals) can operate on a single runway. But the director general of civil aviation has sanctioned more than this number," he said. "So from October, we operate 37 to 40 flights daily on the single runway and the daily figure for flights operated at Mumbai has crossed the 700 mark."
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