Various flights from Mumbai airport were cancelled and rescheduled on Monday after the airport closed the main runway for 6 hours for pre-monsoon maintenance work. As many as 225 flights form Jet Airways, indigo, Air India, Spice Jet, Vistara etc. were canceled along with others rescheduled due to the work.
The Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL), which runs the city airport, has announced the closure of the main runway (O9/27) between 11 am and 5 pm on Monday as well as is informed to be closed on Tuesday also. The airport is main base of Jet airways operating bulk operation in both national and international sector. The airport is also operation base of budget carrier GoAir as well.
70 flights including 54 domestic service of Jet airways were cancelled while another 70 were rescheduled including 17 international flights. Air India cancelled 34 flights diverting 4 flights. SpiceJet and GoAir said they cancelled 18 and seven flights respectively, while Vistara did not operate six services on Monday and 4 rescheduled.
IndiGo didn’t provide the details but stated that some were rescheduled and some were cancelled.
Airlines said that passengers were pre-informed about the pre-planned maintenance activities before the monsoon season. Airlines are offering free rescheduling of tickets as well as refund on the cancelled flights during this period but the disruption has led to an increase in prices upto 14% for flights taking off and landing before 11 am or after 5pm.
The Mumbai airport, which is the second busiest in the country, has two crossing runways — 09/27 (the main) and 14/32 (the secondary runway). While the primary runway can handle up to 48 arrivals and departures per hour, the secondary runway has a capacity of 35 flight movements per hour. On an average, there are 970 flight arrivals and departures at the Mumbai airport every day.
