Mumbai airport handles record 1,003 flight movements in 24 hours

In a record achievement, Mumbai airport handled over 1,000 aircraft movements in a day on Tuesday, breaking its earlier record of 988 single-day arrivals and departures.

“Mumbai airport has achieved 1,003 aircraft movement in 24-hour yesterday,” a Mumbai International Airport (MIAL) spokesperson said. This was the highest-ever traffic handled by the airport in a single day.

MIAL, a joint venture between the GVK group and the Airports Authority of India, runs the country’s second busiest airport.

The single-runway operated Mumbai airport handled 48.49 million passengers in FY18, registering a 7.4 percent growth over FY17.

Mumbai airport, with two crossing runways – 09/27 (the main) and 14/32 (the secondary runway) – is the main hub of full-service carrier Jet Airways and budget airline GoAir.

The primary runway can handle up to 48 arrivals and departures per hour while the secondary runway has a capacity of 35 flight movements per hour.

In a report released earlier this year, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) noted that Mumbai airport had reached 94 percent 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,” the report said.

Back in May 2017, 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.