Mumbai: The Mumbai airport on Wednesday broke its own record of flight movements by handling 1,003 aircraft on a single runway in a 24-hour period between midnight on Monday and Tuesday.
Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL), the operator, said the airport handled 1,003 takeoffs and landings, surpassing its handling of 988 flight movements in a day, making it the highest traffic in a single day at any single-runway airport in India. Mumbai airport is already the busiest single-runway airport in the world ahead of Gatwick.
Landing system upgraded
MIAL, which recently upgraded the Instrument Landing System, said the feat could be achieved due to heavy rain, as several aircraft diverted to nearby airports like Ahmedabad and Baroda were later accommodated immediately after the rain stopped, leading to an increase in flight movements.
“Movements were affected earlier on Tuesday as the city saw a thunderstorm. This led to a large number of delays and disruptions. These delayed flights landed and took off past midnight on Monday, adding to Tuesday’s data of 1,003 flight movements,” a senior MIAL official said.
Between midnight on Monday and Tuesday, the airport recorded 506 arrivals: 377 domestic flights and 129 international. On the departures side, the airport reported 497 movements: 367 domestic and 130 international flights. “It was an excellent team work of all the stakeholders — ATC, CISF, immigration, and airline ground staff. In fact, the domestic on-time performance on Tuesday was 82-83%,” the official said.
Though having two intersecting runways, the airport uses only one of them at any given time. The main runway has a declared capacity of 46 movements per hour, and flight schedules and slots are approved on that basis. Flight movements on a given day can be higher because of non-scheduled or charter movements, and thus on an average, the airport sees 48-50 movements per hour during peak hours.
London’s Gatwick airport, which has the tag of being the most-efficient single-runway airport, handles around 55 movements per hour, and, unlike Mumbai, does not have round-the-clock operations and has a curfew on flight movement from midnight till 5 a.m.
Among other Indian airports, the Delhi airport handled 1,259 movements in 2017, which is divided across its three runways. Similarly, the Hyderabad airport handled an average of 480 flight movements per day.