Mumbai airport's main runway shut for six hours; 225 flights cancelled 

MUMBAI: Flight services at the Mumbai airport were badly hit today with various airlines cancelling as many as 225 flights, besides rescheduling scores of others, due to the closure of the main runway for six hours for pre-monsoon maintenance work.

The Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL), which runs the city airport, has announced the closure of the main runway (O9/27) between 11 am and 5 pm for today and tomorrow.

As many as 225 flights operated by various airlines, including Jet Airways, IndiGo, Air India, SpiceJet, GoAir and Vistara, were cancelled during the closure of the runway, an airport official said.

The city airport is the main base of Jet Airways and a bulk of its operations, both domestic and international, are carried out from here.

The Mumbai airport is the operations base of budget carrier GoAir as well.

While Jet Airways cancelled 70 flights, including 54 domestic services, Air India decided not to operate 34 flights in view of the runway closure.

Jet Airways also rescheduled 70 flights, including 17 international ones, while Air India diverted four flights.

"Due to the pre-planned maintenance activities before the monsoon season, the runway at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport will be closed on April 9-10 from 1100 hours to 1700 hours," Jet Airways had informed its passengers on its website, ahead of the runway closure.

When contacted, an Air India spokesperson also said the cancellation of flights due to the runway maintenance work at the Mumbai airport was intimated to the passengers well in advance.

SpiceJet and GoAir said they cancelled 18 and seven flights respectively, while Vistara said it did not operate six services.

"There is a negligible impact of the temporary runway closure on our operations.

Only six of our flights were cancelled and four were re-timed on both the days.

Prior notification of the closure helped us plan well and minimise the impact...," a Vistara spokesperson said in a statement.

Gurgaon-based budget carrier IndiGo was, however, the only airline which did not share the number of flights it had cancelled and merely said the runway closure had "resulted in a few cancellations".

The Mumbai airport, which is the second busiest in the country, has two crossing runways -- 09/27 (the main) and 14/32 (the secondary runway).

While the primary runway can handle up to 48 arrivals and departures per hour, the secondary runway has a capacity of 35 flight movements per hour.

On an average, there are 970 flight arrivals and departures at the Mumbai airport every day.