Chennai: A tyre-burst thattook place in faraway Hyderabad airport created widespread chaos over the skies of Chennai and Bengaluru, which affected hundreds of flyers and exposed an absence of coordination between airports that could prove serious, even fatal, in an emergency.
As the crippled IndiGo ATR aircraft sat on the Hyderabad runway for hours, air traffic control diverted many international and red-eye domestic flights approaching the country’s fourth busiest airport to Bengaluru and Chennai. What followed was five hours of mayhem from 10.30pm.
The Chennai airport took on most of the diverted flights — 34 additional flights landed in the city — as Bengaluru’s air space was too congested. Bengaluru also diverted four scheduled flights to Chennai.
This caused tense moments for pilots scouting for airports to land. Passengers in delayed flights, meanwhile, spent the night aboard the aircraft.
A pilot said there was confusion as flights hovered over Bengaluru for more than 10 minutes before they were diverted them to Chennai in the hope of finding a landing slot.
A few Chennai-Hyderabad and Bengaluru-Hyderabad flights had to return; flights to Hyderabad from Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Singapore were also rerouted to Chennai.
“Multiple diversions of planes and flights returning midway shows lack of coordination between airports though these airports have automated and manual facilities like airport operations control centres (AOCCs). Diverting flights to Bengaluru, which was congested was risky,” he added.
Though AOCCs are available at the airports in Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru, there was little information about ground delays. Chennai managed well even though there was pressure on air traffic control with many aircraft queuing up to land.
“The authorities must think about alternate airports,” a senior pilot said. “Begumpet airport is lying unused in Hyderabad and the HAL airport is not used for commercial flights in Bengaluru. These two airports could be readied for handling diversions during such emergencies.”
