Flights have been delayed or cancelled at the Mumbai airport since the SpiceJet incident.
The Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) seems to taken the biggest hit from the heavy rain in Mumbai. The main runway of the airport has been closed as a SpiceJet aircraft overshot the runway and got stuck in soft mud on Tuesday night after it landed on the wet surface. Operations at the world's busiest single runway airport with a flight every 65 seconds have been disrupted by bad weather and the overshooting accident. The New Delhi airport, in comparison, has three parallel runways in use at any given time.
SpiceJet's Boeing 737 aircraft which was stranded at the end of the main runway was retrieved on Wednesday night. The runway however is likely to remain closed for some more time.
Till 8pm on Wednesday, 77 arrivals and 84 departures were cancelled. One flight was diverted while there were six go arounds which means that a plane, despite a descent, does not land at the last minute and makes another approach.
Jet Airways has cancelled the maximum number of flights in and out of Mumbai. In a statement, the airline said, "The continuing inclement weather in Mumbai, together with the closure of the main runway has impacted our operations causing us to divert/cancel several flights to/from Mumbai in the interest of safety and as a precautionary measure. Interim operations are being undertaken via the secondary runaway. Our teams are working round the clock to ensure that inconvenience to guests is minimized and operations are normalized at the earliest." The airline added that it is continuing to monitor the situation in Mumbai.
Other airlines like Air India, IndiGo and SpiceJet have also cancelled flights out of Mumbai. Airport operations are functioning through the secondary runway which is shorter and many airlines avoid using. Several international flights have been diverted which includes carriers like Singapore Airlines as they do not use the secondary runway.
While Mumbai Airport has two runways, the secondary runway, which is being used now for flights to take off and land, is a cross runway and only one runway is used at any given time at Mumbai. The Mumbai ATC handles two arrivals every 130 seconds and one departure in between the two arrivals.