Ministry meet on July 15 to review congestion at Mumbai airport

People flying in and out of Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai may expect some respite from congestion and delays. The civil aviation ministry is meeting on July 15 to resolve the problem.

“We are meeting on July 15 to review the congestion at the Mumbai airport and also find solutions so that the congestion could be eased. The problem could be either from the airline’s side or because of the construction at the airport,” said a senior ministry official, who did not want to be identified.

An airport of Mumbai’s size can handle traffic of over 60 flights an hour but the airport currently operates only 31 flights an hour, and on an average, the flights are delayed by 30 minutes, the official added.

A senior executive at the Mumbai airport said the congestion was because of various reasons and not one.

“We are at a stage which Delhi was a year back. There is huge construction work going on at the airport. One of the runways has been recarpeted and the work on the other is to start soon,” he said.

Unlike Delhi, which has three adjacent runways, two runways at the Mumbai airport intersect at a point.

“Also, the air traffic control at the airport is short-staffed, which further adds to the problem,” added the source.

The Mumbai airport, along with the ones in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Kolkata, handles over 50 per cent of the passengers in India. In 2008, for the second year in a row, it was the world’s most-delayed airport in terms of arrivals with only 49.95 per cent of arrivals on time. About 58 per cent of its late arrivals in 2008 were delayed by 30 minutes or more.

Currently, the Mumbai airport caters to 25 million passengers a year and is being modernised by Mumbai International Airport Ltd, a consortium of GVK Industries Ltd and Airports Company South Africa.

To ease congestion, a new airport is also being planned in Mumbai. The proposed Navi Mumbai International airport is to be built through public-private partnership. Under this arrangement, the private sector partner will get 74 per cent equity, while the Airports Authority of India and the state government (through City and Industrial Development Corporation) will hold 13 per cent each.

Delay in environmental clearances has already delayed the project by two years.

The first phase of the project was to begin in 2008 and complete by 2012 but the work has not yet started.