Heavy rains delay flight operations at Mumbai airport

The flight operations at the Mumbai airport were delayed due to heavy rains on Sunday. This has happened for the second time in less than a month.

Rains had led to a pothole on one of the taxiways, forcing the airport authorities to shut the main runway and resulting in delays in aircraft movement, according to sources.

The Mumbai International Airport Limited’s (MIAL) the main runway, 009/27 was shut down for operations.

For over three hours on Sunday morning, the runway remained out of use. It led to shifting of operations to the capacity-constrained secondary runway -- 14/32.

A source said, “As a result, both arrivals and departures were affected with the incoming flights reporting an average delay of two hours, while departures getting delayed by almost an hour till the afternoon.”

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The runway closure resulted in a delay of “half-an-hour”, a spokesperson of the MIAL said.

The main runway was shut for operations at 6 am and the services could be resumed only at 10 am after the problem was fixed, the spokesperson said.

“Runway 009/27 was not available from 6 am due to a pothole between the N1 and N3 runways. Due to the repair work on the taxiway, the secondary runway was put into operations,” the spokesperson added.

The operations at the main runway were finally restored at 10 am.

(With PTI inputs)

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