Mumbai airport shut for 6 hours every Tuesday

If you are catching a flight from Mumbai between 11am and 12noon on a Tuesday, be sure to arrive at least 75 minutes before the scheduled
departure time.

The airport will witness complete closure for six hours as the intersection between two cross-runways will be shut for the next 22 Tuesdays from 12 noon to 6pm for repair and reconstruction work. This would not only mean that flight operations would be suspended during that time, but departing and arriving flights prior to the closure will have to stick strictly to schedule in order to avoid major delays or diversions to other airports.

At least 12 flights have been cancelled and four rescheduled at Mumbai international airport due to six-hour runway closure starting today.

Jet Airways & JetLite have decided to reschedule flights to and from Mumbai on Tuesdays.

Kingfisher that operates 31 domestic flights out of and into Mumbai has either changed flight timings or flight numbers.

In order to avoid last-minute hassles, passengers can arrive a little more than an hour earlier. The Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd (MIAL) will be making additional announcements to facilitate quick check-in and to update flyers on the status of their flights.

While on other occasions, it is possible to roam around in the airport, on Tuesdays it is advised that passengers collect their boarding cards and move towards boarding gates as soon as their flight is announced. ‘‘The flight will not wait as in case of a delay, there would not be any way out for the next six hours. Hence, passengers will have to be careful and make sure that they board on time,’’ said an MIAL official.

Passengers will be intimated about the situation on the airline counters as well. While the closure of intersection will bring most operations to a halt, MIAL said a shortened runway, which is almost half of the usual 3,448 metres available, will be used for smaller aircraft operations. ‘‘As many as 83 flight departures and arrivals will be taking place on a shortened runway. This would mean that only small aircraft like ATRs or a Boeing 737, Airbus-319,320 will operate. Jet airways and Kingfisher are the only two airlines to be operational during those hours,’’ an MIAL official said.

Almost 100 flight slots have either been cancelled or rescheduled in the wake of the closure. Officials said the closure would affect the most in case of an emergency situation.

‘‘Since the secondary runway is already shut for reconstruction, we will have no option to accommodate any aircraft even during an emergency on Tuesdays, unless its a small aircraft,’’ said an airport official.