MUMBAI: The main runway of the country’s second-busiest airport, the Chhattrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, will remain closed for operations for five months, except Sundays, starting November 1, an official said on Friday.
The runway is being shuttered to carry out re-carpeting the tarmac, said the official. The move is expected to cause inconvenience to passengers, as airlines may have to curtail their schedules.
It can be noted that the Mumbai is the world’s busiest single-runway airport, handling close to 1,000 aircraft movements a day.
“The main runway 09/27 will not be available for aircraft operations from November to March 2020, for six days—Mondays to Saturdays—between 09:30 am and 5.30 pm, due to major rehabilitation and re-carpeting works,” an airport spokesperson said in a statement.
However, during the runway closure period, the secondary runway14/32 will be available for aircraft operations, the statement said.
It also said the main runway will be available for operations on all Sundays as well as on December 25, January 1 and 15, February 19 and 21 and also on March 10 and 25.
Meanwhile, Goair in a statement said it working with the airport operator to finalise an effective flight schedule so that inconvenience to passengers can be minimised. The airline operates 96 flights to/from the city every day.
Indigo flight makes emergency landing
An Indigo flight from Chandigarh carrying 144 passengers had to make an emergency landing at the city airport on Friday on its arrival due to an engine issue, a source said. The flight, however, landed safely, he said.
The airline confirmed the incident but said the captain received “precautionary warning” about one of the engines and sought priority landing.
“Full emergency was declared for Indigo flight 6E463 operating on the Chandigarh-Mumbai route at 4.28 pm. The flight landed safely at 4.44 pm on runway 27 and was fully parked. The full emergency was withdrawn at 4.47 pm,” an ATC officer said.
It can be noted that the VT-IJC Indigo Neo plane was delivered as recently as May. According to Indigo, upon decent to Mumbai, the captain received a precautionary warning for engine No 1 and following necessary SOPs he asked for a priority landing.
There was no in-flight shutdown and no emergency was declared, it said, adding the aircraft proceeded to the assigned bay and the passengers disembarked normally.
The aircraft is currently being checked by the maintenance team. It may be recalled that DGCA had earlier this month grounded three pilots and two aircraft maintenance engineers of Indigo for not reporting vibrations in the Pratt & Whitney engines of the A320 Neos in separate incidents that occurred since March.
