Mumbai airport runway upgrade delayed over 3000 flights in week

Even as the Airport Authorities of India (AAI) is busy in upgrading its Mumbai airport runway equipment, instrument landing system (ILS), to help pilots with navigation while landing at the airport, the exercise has been continuing for the past week and this has led to numerous cancellations and diversions of flights. The work has affected around 3,000 international and domestic flights, arriving or departing from Mumbai airport, said a DNA report. 
 
However, if it is any solace, the number of flights getting affected has come down in the past two days, but the upgrade work is likely to continue till June 5. “Wednesday and Thursday were better than the previous days,” an airport official said and added, “There will be an improvement in terms of delays going down in the coming days at the Mumbai airport.”
 
The air traffic monitoring portal, Flightradar 24, stated that around 55 arriving flights on Thursday, were delayed up to 8.15 pm as compared to overall 173 arriving flights delayed on Wednesday. Around 220 departing flights were also delayed on Thursday up to 8.15 pm compared to 348 on Wednesday, said the report.
 
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The delay gap for most of the flights on the said days was under 30 minutes compared to previous days when there was reportedly an average delay between 40 minutes to 90 minutes.