472 flights delayed, 11 cancelled at Mumbai airport due to rains on Monday

A Mumbai airport official said the airport was shut briefly due to low visibility, but AAI officials said it was because pilots chose not to land.

As many as 472 flights were delayed till 10.45pm at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) on Monday, according to flightradar24, an internet-based service. The airport was also briefly shut for operations owing to low visibility during the downpour and 11 flights were cancelled, said officials of Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd (MIAL).

Flights lined up for take off on the main runway at Mumbai Airport, July 8, 2019 . Heavy rains led to low visibility due to which some flights were delayed and few diverted. (Satyabrata Tripathy/HT Photo)

A spokesperson for MIAL said, “The airport had to be shut for operations from 9.12am to 9.31am, after which the operations resumed. However, the rain led to average delays of 31 minutes.”

However, senior officials from the Airports Authority of India (AAI) said airport operations were not suspended in the morning and that pilots chose to not land owing to visibility reducing to 500m. Visibility below 800m is considered unsafe for flight operations. “The airport officially remained shut for 15 minutes in the afternoon [from around 2.30pm] as part of the weekly routine runway repair, which further led to a delay in flight operations,” said an AAI official. According to MIAL, until 3pm, six flights had to perform go-arounds, three flights including British Airways’s BA 135 (London to Mumbai) had to be diverted to Hyderabad and Spicejet’s SG 8701 (Delhi - Mumbai) had to be diverted to Ahmedabad. Three arrivals and eight departures, all IndiGo flights, had to be cancelled.

A Mumbai air traffic control official said, “There have been no significant delays at the airport in the evening. All delays are the result of poor weather condition in the morning and airport closure for routine maintenance work in the afternoon.”