MUMBAI: The Navi Mumbai airport is likely to be operational only by 2022, say aviation experts, adding that the next five years will see flyers from Mumbai pay a heavy price for the delay.
India’s domestic market is on track to surpass 100 million domestic passengers this fiscal and become the world’s third largest domestic market behind the US and China, according to aviation consultancy group Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA).
Most of this growth though is concentrated in Delhi and Mumbai. In 2016, Delhi, the busiest Indian airport, handled 55 million passengers (domestic and international included), while Mumbai handled 44 million passengers. Bangalore is a distant third with 22.73 million total passengers. Can Mumbai and Delhi airport handle the passenger growth? Airport capacity is primarily defined by the capacity of its terminal buildings and runway capacity , the number of aircraft departures and arrivals it can handle per hour. Unlike Delhi, which has 3runways and can handle 60 million passengers per year, Mumbai is ill-prepared.Mumbai airport’s declared terminal building capacity is 40 million. With no second airport around, MIAL has embarked on a Rs 35,000 million expansion plan to increase terminal capacity to 50-52 million passengers.
The problem though is with runway capacity. Mumbai airport’s main runway’s declared handling capacity is 45 flights per hour, but currently , it handles close to 52 flights per hour during peak hour. Work is on to increase the capacity of runway 27, the question though is by how much? “We will always be on tenterhooks,” said a senior air traffic controller. “Whenever there is an unusual occurrence, say , like heavy rain or a bird hit or an emergency , even a small disruption of 5-10 minutes will lead to heavy traffic pile-up. It will worsen each year,” he added.
Then again, airfares will go up, especially on early morning departures. Currently , bet ween 5.30 am and 7.30 am, the busiest period, the airport handles about 60-70 departures.”These are operated by aircraft parked overnight at the airport. Due to land constraints not many night parking bays can be added despite the demand and so fares will go up,” the controller added.
The only solace is carriers like Air India and Jet might deploy more wide-bodied aircraft like they did this winter between Mumbai and Delhi. “But fares to destinations like Jodhpur, Jaipur, Kochi will skyrocket,” said an airline official. Runway 27 cannot be used during winter due to strong tailwinds and flight operations are moved to runway 09. But runway 09 cannot handle as many flights in an hour as runway 27 because of infrastructure constraints. The forecast for the coming 5 years then is inordinate flight delays, especially for early morning winter flights