Mumbai airport operations stalled for three hours after heavy rains cause potholes on taxiways

Mumbai: Heavy rains affected the flight operations at the Mumbai airport on Sunday, second time in less than a month, causing delays. According to sources, rains had led to a pothole on one of the taxiways, forcing the airport authorities to shut the main runway and resulting in delays in aircraft movement. [caption id=“attachment_2588514” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai. PTI[/caption] This was the second time in less than a month that the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL), the GVK-led joint venture airport company, had to shut the main runway, 009/27, for operations. The runway remained out of use for over three hours this morning following which the operations were shifted to the capacity-constrained secondary runway - 14/32. “As a result, both arrivals and departures were affected with the incoming flights reporting an average delay of two hours, while departures getting delayed by almost an hour till the afternoon,” a source said. However, a spokesperson of the MIAL said the runway closure resulted in a delay of “half-an-hour”. Confirming the development of the pothole on a taxiway due to rains, the spokesperson said the main runway was shut for operations at 6 am and the services could be resumed only at 10 am after the problem was fixed. “Runway 009/27 was not available from 6 am due to a pothole between the N1 and N3 runways. Due to the repair work on the taxiway, the secondary runway was put into operations,” the spokesperson added. The traffic at the main runway was finally restored at 10 am.