If you are flying to or from the financial capital of the country, expect a delay of 30-45 minutes in your flight departures or arrivals. If you are not so lucky, then your flight may get diverted to the nearest airport or can be cancelled as well if the weather doesn’t help the already bad situation. Hence, check your flight status before you step out of your homes to board the flight.

It has been a chaotic situation at the Mumbai airport since late Monday when the main runway 09-27 got shut temporarily after a SpiceJet aircraft operating from Jaipur to Mumbai overshot the main runway and landed into soft mud 250 m ahead of the edge of the runway. The heavy rains did not help the situation and delayed the recovery work.

A team of engineers and maintenance staff from Air India has been at work since Tuesday to remove the aircraft from the runway area but it will take some more time for the aircraft to be removed, officials said.

The Air India Express aircraft, which had overshot the Mangalore airport runway on Sunday evening, was finally removed from the runway area on Wednesday morning. Hence, it is expected that the SpiceJet aircraft may finally be removed from the runway area by tonight or tomorrow morning.

“Operations are expected to be resumed by tomorrow if the weather does not halt the recovery work,” another official aware of the development said.

Overall, the airport has witnessed around 300 flight cancellations and diversions so far since Monday because of the main runway being shut and heavy rains.

The airport has two crossing runways but it is the main runway 09-27 which is mostly operational and it handles around 48 flight movements an hour. The secondary runway 14-32, which is currently operational, handles about 35 flight movements an hour and comes to use only when the main runway is not functional due to maintenance or any other reason.

Today, there have been a total of 25 cancellations for IndiGo, as per a spokesperson of Mumbai airport. In addition, there have been six diversions and flights have been delayed for around 30-45 minutes, as per the information available from Mumbai airport.

“As a result of the ongoing closure of the main runway in Mumbai since July 1 due to an incident of another airline compounded by the severe weather conditions, a substantial number of cancellations and diversions for IndiGo and other airlines have had to be implemented,” a statement from IndiGo said.

The delays, diversions and cancellations at one of the busiest airport in the country had a spillover effect at other parts of the country. Also, this hit the schedule of the airlines and that of the operating crew as well.

“As aircraft and crew rotations go throughout the whole country there was a ripple effect throughout the system which caused delays not only in Mumbai but also in other parts of the country and also affected some international flights.

In addition, the effect was that aircraft had to divert to different places due to the ongoing Mumbai main runway closure and needed to be recovered to put it in the right rotational sequence. This has led to a situation where flight duty time of the operating crew becomes a limiting factor. Flight duty times are a mandatory requirement with zero tolerance which IndiGo is adhering to” IndiGo said today.

First Published:Jul 4, 2019 6:30 PM IST