Mumbai: Mumbai International Airport Ltd on Tuesday undertook a post-monsoon maintenance exercise, which saw the airport being out of bounds for traffic for six hours.
The main and secondary runways remained closed between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.. In the second phase, repair work will be carried out between February 7 and March 30 (except on March 21) between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
While the primary runway can handle up to 50 arrivals and departures an hour against the declared capacity of 46, the secondary runway has a capacity of 35 flight movements an hour. The airport handles about 1,000 flights a day.
Flightradar24, a Swedish airport and aircraft tracker, showed that 170 flights were delayed in Mumbai on Tuesday. While 126 flights (35% of departures) suffered delays, 44 flights (12% of arrivals) were affected.
“We had informed the airlines months in advance about the situation, and have encouraged them to bring in wide body aircraft to accommodate more passengers,” an airport spokesperson said. Officials said the closure was to strengthen the intersection in the runway as the monsoon had ended. “Since the repair work was to be done at the intersection, we had to close the runway completely. We decided to close it during the day time to lessen the impact on early morning, late evening, and international flights,” an official said.
Officials said re-carpeting and overlay work of the runway intersection is done every seven years, and it was last done in 2010-11.
The airport has two cross runways which on an average handle 950 aircraft daily. The main runway (nine to 27) handles most flight operations, while the secondary runway, which is shorter in length, is used when the main one is not available. The airport undertakes routine runway maintenance work every Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. when operations are shifted to the secondary runway.