Mumbai Airport shut for runway repairs, no flights in or out

Flights will resume at 5 pm, and the runway will also remain shut from 11 am to 5 pm on April 10.

The runway at Mumbai airport has been shut for maintenance work from 11 am. It will be opened again at 5 pm. There will be no flights in or out of the Mumbai airport during this six-hour period. The runway will be shut for a similar period on April 10.

Mumbai airport actually has two runways but they intersect with each other, because of which the only one can be used at a time. The 12,008-foot runway was built to handle 46 take-offs and departures in one hour. But it has often witnessed more than 50 movements in an hour.

Airlines took to social media to post their revised schedules for flights connecting to, from or through Mumbai. The runway shutdown is likely to have an effect on air traffic across the country, considering its connectedness to multiple sectors.

Mumbai airport is the second busiest airport in India in terms of total and international passenger traffic after Delhi. Its passenger traffic had crossed 45 million in 2016-17. That accounts for 18.6 percent of the total air traffic of India, which is one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the word. The Mumbai airport also ranks second busiest in terms of cargo traffic. 

The Mumbai airport had on January 20 broken the record for the highest number of arrivals and departures in a 24-hour period. It clocked 980 flights, breaking its own previous record of 974 flights in a single day.

The airport, which is privately run by GVK group, has connectivity with 95 domestic and international destinations. Delhi airport, which has three parallel runways, handled 5.7 crore passengers in the same year (21.6 percent of the air traffic).