Repair work continues to delay flights

For the second consecutive day, tailwinds (winds blowing towards the course of an aircraft) disrupted flight movement as the Mumbai airport’s main runway was shut for repairs for eight hours on Thursday.

For the second consecutive day, tailwinds (winds blowing towards the course of an aircraft) disrupted flight movement as the Mumbai airport’s main runway was shut for repairs for eight hours on Thursday.

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“The air traffic control (ATC) officials had to suspend operations for a while to switch runway ends because of the high speed winds,” a Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) spokesperson, said.

As a result both incoming flights and those flying outside the city were delayed by an average of 45 minutes. However, airport authorities handled the highest number of flights movements in the past four days with just one runway. From 9 am to 5pm, the period when the main runway was shut, the smaller runway handles 256 flight movements (take offs and landings). Until now, the secondary runway had catered to 240 movements in the absence of the main runway.