Mumbai: Mumbai airport has continued to rank last among India’s 10 busiest airports in the on-time performance (OTP) , with only 49%, or one in two flights, departing on time in Jan and the punctuality improving to 55% in Feb and 72% in March, showed Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) data. Mumbai airport’s continued presence at the bottom of the rankings was expected as the Navi Mumbai airport, commissioned in Dec last year, can only take on the growth in air travel demand generated in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. It cannot decongest the Mumbai airport.A flight is classified as delayed if it departs more than 15 minutes after its scheduled departure time. But not all delays are because of air traffic congestion at the Mumbai airport. A number of flights depart late because of airlines’ operational reasons, crew shortage, poor weather etc, factors that have nothing to do with the airport. Unlike other top metros like Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, the Mumbai airport doesn’t have a parallel runway. All flights that take off or land at the Mumbai airport depart from the lone operational runway causing air traffic congestion. The OTP data though accounts for all the delays, irrespective of the cause.The airports that consistently stayed in the top three in the OTP rankings during the said three months were Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports. In March, 93% of departures from Chennai airport, 90% flights from Hyderabad and 88% flights from Bengaluru took off on time. Airline-wise data reinforces the pattern. For most carriers, including IndiGo, Air India Group, Akasa Air and SpiceJet, Mumbai registers a comparatively low OTP among their top stations. IndiGo, for instance, records OTP of around 78% in Mumbai, significantly lower than its performance at airports such as Chennai (97%) and Kolkata (93%).“The new airport at Navi Mumbai has allowed airlines to add more flights from the Mumbai region without further congesting the Mumbai airport. But if Mumbai has to decongest, airlines will have to move some of the slots from Mumbai to Navi Mumbai airport, which currently doesn’t make commercial sense,” said an airline official. Slot allocations at Mumbai, built over years, cannot be arbitrarily withdrawn, which limits any immediate redistribution of traffic, he added. Mumbai airport continues to handle roughly 950 flights in a 24-hour period, a level comparable to pre-NMIA operations. The NMIA airport handles about 140 flight movements a day, with air traffic expected to go up to 350 flight a day by year-end.
