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Indian carriers are cancelling 30 flights per day till March 30 following the directive issued by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) to the Mumbai airport to ease runway congestion.
According to the government officials, overall, only about three per cent of the daily flights being handled at the Mumbai airport have been cut. "The airport handles 1000 movements a day and about 30 movements will be cut (including both arrivals and departures). Even with this cut, the airport will be operating at full capacity," an official added.
Akasa Air on Tuesday announced it was cancelling 90 Mumbai flights till the end of next month.
SpiceJet told Business Standard that it has complied with the government’s directive, but did not specify the number of flights it was cancelling.
A senior executive from a major Indian carrier told this newspaper that his airline was planning to cancel hundreds of flights, though the exact number was not finalised yet, since discussions are ongoing with the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL).
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The AAI, operating under the Ministry of Civil Aviation, has asked Adani Group-run MIAL to reduce flights due to runway congestion, which has resulted in a decline in airlines' on-time performance.
The ministry, in a statement on Tuesday night, stated: "While Mumbai Airport is running at its full capacity, it was found that the persistent congestion was caused due to: excessive slot distribution with limited time margins on behalf of the airport operator; non-adherence of the slots on behalf of the airlines and; non-scheduled operations during peak hours."
MIAL, being the slot provider as well as the manager of slots to the airlines, should have proactively taken steps to streamline and regulate the air traffic movements, to resolve this problem, the ministry noted. "However, since no such action was initiated by them, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has had to step in," it added.
Akasa Air and SpiceJet operate about 54 flights and 34 flights per day, respectively, to and from the Mumbai airport, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium's data.
The bigger airlines such as IndiGo and Air India operate around 370 flights and 163 flights per day, respectively, to and from the Mumbai airport.
MIAL, Air India, AIX Connect, Vistara and IndiGo did not respond to the newspaper's requests for a statement on this matter.
Akasa Air spokesperson said the airlines’ flight operations to and from Mumbai are expected to be impacted with guidelines being implemented to reduce runway congestion at the Mumbai airport.
“Considering this impact, we have to rationalise our network resulting in the cancellation of flights QP 1374 (Mumbai to Bengaluru) & QP 1362 (Bengaluru to Mumbai) between February 15 to March 30, 2024,” the spokesperson added.
The airline's two cancelled flights are daily services. Consequently, Akasa is cancelling 90 flights between February 15 and March 30.
“We are proactively communicating to impacted passengers giving them options to either rebook at no additional fee or process a full refund. Passengers can rebook on any date until April 15, 2024. Our Akasa Care Agents are proactively assisting passengers to minimise inconvenience and our airport services team is also geared to assist passengers on the ground as required,” an Akasa Air spokesperson added.
