Mumbai airport sets new world record by handling a flight every 60 seconds

Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International airport set a new world record for single-runway airports by handling a staggering 980 flights in a span of 24 hours, nearly a flight per minute.

It achieved this feat on January 20, besting its earlier record of handling 974 flights set on December 6, 2017.

Back in May last year, the GVK group-run Mumbai airport became the world’s busiest single-runway airport by handling an average of 837 daily flights in fiscal 2017, leaving behind London’s Gatwick airport.

Mumbai handled 45.2 million flyers against Gatwick’s 44 million in fiscal 2017.

Incidentally, although Gatwick remains more efficient as it handles all flights between 5 am to midnight due to a night curfew, Mumbai is expected to become the first single runway airport in the world to cross the 1,000 flight mark.

If the airport manages to successfully handle thousand plus flights in a day, it will be a major feat for the airport operator Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd (MIAL), and the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

According to a Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) report, Mumbai has reached 94% passenger handling capacity and will reach saturation point in 2018.

“The airport currently handles 45.2 million passengers and sees around 930 flight operations per day, and will handle 48 million passengers in 2018. Reaching its saturation would mean that it will increase additional daily flights by 48 this year,” a CAPA report said.

Both domestic and international airports in Mumbai share a common runway.