A day after a Spicejet aircraft overshot the runway rendering it inoperational for 26 hours, operations at the Chhatrapati Maharaj International Airport on Thursday gradually limped back to normalcy with 44 flights being cancelled and the aircraft reporting an average delay of 30 minutes throughout the day.
Operations on the airport’s main runway 27, that had to be shut down after the Spicejet flight with 183 passengers overshot it, began at around 12.20 a.m. after the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) was followed and runway inspections carried out. The disabled Spicejet aircraft was retrieved by a 90-member team of the Air India Engineering Services Limited (AIESL) at 9.38 p.m.
Asked about the delays, a senior Jet Airways official said that most of their planes have been deployed as recovery flights to clear the backlog and things are really heading towards normalcy. The airline, which has Mumbai as its base, had the most number of cancellations at 70 on Wednesday, while Indigo and Go Air had 10 and 2 flights cancelled respectively.
MMRDA officials cover potholes with paver blocks on Western Express Highway near Bandra on September 21, 2017.
Though the operations on the main runway were being carried out on Thursday, officials at the airport said that it would take almost the entire day to return to actual normalcy. Airport and flight monitoring website, Flightradar24 reported that 196 incoming flights were flying late and 297 departures were delayed. Similarly, 24 arrivals and 20 departures were reported cancelled from Mumbai airport.
Gourab Pal, who was flying to Kolkata was at the airport from 9 a.m. hoping that his flight of 10.20 a.m. would leave sometime soon. “It kept getting rescheduled. From 10.20 a.m. to 10.45 a.m. to 11.40 a.m. and then 12.30 p.m., before eventually taking off at 2.50 p.m.,” he said.
The AIESL received appreciation from the Union Minister of Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju. AIESL chief executive officer H.R. Jagannath said the advantage was that their aircraft recovery kit was based in Mumbai itself. “So our men were on the ground quickly,” he said. AIESL has carried out similar operations, including retrieving a Turkish Airlines A-330 which kept the Kathmandu Airport shut for more than 48 hours last year.
