The Oman Air flight finally left Hyderabad at 3:26 pm and reached Mumbai at 5 pm
A landing system instrument upgrade on the runway of Mumbai airport has been leading to cascading delays in flight operations since May 18. On Sunday, an Oman Air flight coming to Mumbai from Muscat was diverted to Hyderabad due to air traffic congestion over Mumbai airport.
Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport is upgrading its instrument landing system or ILS, which guides aircraft to the runway even in low visibility situation such as thick fog or rain. The ILS uses a combination of radio signals to help pilots land even when they cannot see the runway.
An airport official said Oman Air flight WY203 finally left Hyderabad at 3:26 pm and reached Mumbai at 5 pm.
Without ILS support, planes are keeping a farther distance between them, which is making them take longer to land and leave the runway. As more flights approach Mumbai, a cascading effect of longer take-off and landing wait time results in delays.
"The wait time due to congestion is not acceptable," the pilot of the Oman Air flight said, news agency ANI reported.
The upgraded ILS will start working again in early June, officials said. The system is being calibrated to ensure it works flawlessly. Early morning and evening peak hour flights are likely to be affected till the ILS is back online.
Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport is the second-busiest airport in the country after Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi. But Mumbai airport has only one runway, which makes operations without ILS time-consuming when some 400 flights land in a day.
Flight-tracking app flightradar24 showed an average delay of 25 minutes in departures from Mumbai airport at 11 am today.
With inputs from ANI