Centre issues directives to reduce airspace congestion at Mumbai Airport

In a bid to address severe airspace congestion at Mumbai Airport, the central government has imposed flight restrictions, caused by various factors, including non-scheduled flight operations during peak hours.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation revealed that, despite the escalating air traffic post-pandemic, the airport had failed to take sufficient measures.
The ministry said that the airport operator did not take steps to streamline and regulate the air traffic movements to resolve this problem, therefore forcing it to step in the matter.
“The airport operator, being the slot provider as well as the manager of slots for the airlines, should have proactively taken steps to streamline and regulate the air traffic movements, to resolve this problem. However, since no such action was initiated by them, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has had to step in,” it said.
The airport is operated by Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL).
The ministry said that the airport “suffers from congestion and excess capacity on its runways, which inadvertently leads to air space congestion, where flights are forced to hover over the city for a long duration of around 40-60 minutes.”
The ministry further said that considering that an aircraft on average consumes 2000kg of fuel per hour, such a long duration of circling time causes significant wastage of fuel for the aircrafts ranging from 1.7 kilolitres of jet fuel (approximately . costing around Rs 1.8 lakh) for a 40-minute circling time in air to around 2.5 Kilolitres of jet fuel (approximately. costing around Rs. 2.6 lakhs) for a 60-minute circling time.
“It is to be understood that such an increase in fuel costs would eventually be borne by the consumers. This also has a cascading effect on the efficiency of airports operations leading to a longer wait time, inordinate delays, affecting both passengers and airlines adversely,” it said.-TIN Bureau