Paving way for smooth flight; BMC to remove hoardings near international airport

Flights should take off and land smoothly from the Juhu International Airport from Friday night.

The BMC on Thursday said it will remove all the 12 hoardings coming in the way of flights taking off/landing at the airport and forcing carriers like Air India (AI) to fly less number of passengers than their capacity.
The BMC has said that it has already removed four hoardings from the area in order to pave way for air carriers to ferry full load of flyers.

The AI had raised the issue with the BMC saying it could not carry its entire capacity of passengers as the hoardings fell in the way of its flights taking off. Accordingly, the BMC has undertaken the work to remove the billboards which, officials said, were authorized ones.

"We have already started removing the hoardings. In the past two days, nine of the hoardings were removed. Now, we will complete the work by Thursday, so there should be no complaints now," additional municipal commissioner, Mohan Adtani informed.

While the BMC is set to lose revenue, it will compensate for allowing the billboards, and as per Adtani, it agreed to remove the hoardings to ensure safe and full load of flights.

A senior civic official, who did not wish to be named, said that the billboards stood at the said locations for at least two decades and the AI authorities had no complaints to make during that period. "At that time, there was no problem. Only recently, the carriers have found issues regarding it. Still, we can't take risks and go by what the aviation authorities have said," he added.

According to BMC officials, the AI authorities had complained to them in May this year that it was impelled to shed 10 passengers per Mumbai-Newark flight, due to the presence of the hoardings.