Zeenews Bureau
Mumbai: Starting Tuesday, Mumbai`s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport(CSIA) will witness closure for six hours due to maintenance work on two runways. The work will be taken up between 12 noon and 6 pm.
From Tuesday, the Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd (MIAL) will begin shutting the airport during low traffic to resurface the intersection between two cross runways.
This schedule will be followed for the next 22 Tuesdays, as per a report. This will result in suspension of flights set to take off during that period and will also force the flights landing and taking-off just before and after the shutdown to stick to timelines.
As per the latest information available, Jet and Kingfisher airlines are the only two airlines which operate between noon and 6 p.m. Tuesday and have accordingly rescheduled a few of their flights.
These include a few operations on the domestic sector and a couple of flights on the Mumbai-London and Mumbai-Singapore sectors.
However, since a part of the runway will be available for operations, smaller aircraft like ATRs, Boeing 737s, Airbus-319 and Airbus-320 will be able to take off and land, the official said.
The airport authorities are keeping their fingers crossed for emergencies -- no large aircraft will be able to operate while the work is on.
Atleast 100 flight slots have been affected due to the maintenance work. MIAL has made an alternative arrangement for smaller aircraft but most flights will be affected adversely due to its secondary runway being shut for reconstruction.
Airport authorities have said minimum passenger inconvenience will be caused as all airlines have been advised on how to work out their flight timetables and avoid problems.
In the past, the Mumbai airport was closed for a prolonged period in 2003.
