A high-level team of officials from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Saturday inspected the Mumbai airport in the wake of the recent spate of aircraft-related incidents.
The team, led by DGCA’s Joint Director General A.K. Sharan, visited the airport and held meetings with all stake holders, sources close to the development told PTI here.
The sources, however, described the visit as a ’routine exercise’ but said the team “conducted a general survey of the airport facilities and also assessed the runway conditions at the Mumbai airport.”
Beside meeting with the Mumbai Airport International Limited (MIAL) authorities, the DGCA team also met officials of airlines operating out of the airport and those of the Air Traffic Control, the source said.
The experts’ team inspected various facilities, including those relating to passengers, navigation, communication, ATC and runway lights.
The airport has, of late, witnessed a series of incidents like near-misses and runway incursions.
Recently, airport operations were severely affected by the closure of the main runway for over an hour after a Blue Dart cargo flight broke some runway lights while proceeding for a take off.
The newly-constructed Terminal I-C also got water- logged earlier this week due to rains. The terminal, constructed at a cost of Rs. 300 crore, remained closed for passengers for nearly five hours, delaying flights by over one-and-half hour.
On May 28, a major disaster was averted when an IndiGo flight, which was instructed by the ATC to move to a taxi bay due to a technical snag, got into the runway where a Jet Airways flight was cleared for landing.
A disaster was averted after the ATC asked the Jet pilot to abort the landing and make a go-around.
Again on June 4, a SpiceJet aircraft got stuck on the same runway where a Kingfisher Airlines flight from Delhi was slated to land, forcing it to do a go-around.
Mumbai airport was privatised along with the Delhi airport by the government in 2006 despite strong protests. It is being modernised and developed by MIAL, a joint venture company of Airports Authority of India and GVK-led consortium, at a cost of Rs. 9,800 crore.
