Secondary runway to miss deadline again

Flight delays in the city are likely to continue until April.

Flight delays in the city are likely to continue until April.

HT Image

The secondary runway repairs, responsible for slowing traffic in the last few months, have come a standstill because of the ongoing strike by stone quarry owners that started on February 19 (See box, The strike).

On Friday, repairs stopped after the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL), the private consortium modernising the airport, ran out of their stone aggregate and stone dust stocks. “We had to stop work because of the lack of supply,” said an MIAL spokesperson.

The runway will now not be ready before April 8. The earlier deadline for re-laying the cross runway was January 31.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) asked the airport operator to complete the work by March 11. Air traffic officials say non-availability of the cross runway, which can handle 150 departures daily, will increase delays in outgoing flights.

“From mid-November, flight movements have increased from 650 to 705 daily and are expected to increase further. Hence, long delays would be inevitable,” said an air traffic official requesting anonymity, as he is not authorised to talk to the media.

With Mumbai being the country’s busiest airport, the delay in the runway repairs is affecting airline on-time performance.

“The DGCA publishes the performance records monthly. The repairs is getting us negative publicity,” said a senior airline official, requesting anonymity.

The airport operator, meanwhile, has reserved a stock of stone aggregate and stone dust stocks for repairs of intersection patch that it re-layed during the six-hour shutdown on Tuesdays.