Some vehicles try to brave it out on the water-logged street at Hindmata on Friday. (Photo: Debashish Dey)
Some vehicles try to brave it out on the water-logged street at Hindmata on Friday. (Photo: Debashish Dey)
Heavy rain disrupted flight operations at Mumbai airport on Friday, with as many as four flights forced to go around and one having to make a diversion at Vadodara, according to airport sources. Airport officials informed that visibility was lowest in the morning and only later, operations normalised. Meanwhile, Jet Airways (JA) confirmed that due to heavy rain and poor visibility, all incoming flights were delayed by 15 to 30 minutes and this continued till late evening. Whereas Spice Jet announced, “Due to bad weather in Mumbai, all departures and arrivals and their consequential flights may get affected”. Vistara and Air India too confirmed delays but said that no cancellation occurred.
Airport officials explained that in the early hours of Friday, flights struggled with poor visibility due to overcast skies and got delayed by almost half-an-hour. This created a congestion in the sky and delayed more flights. The Air Traffic Control office informed that JA flights from Bengaluru (9W410 at 2.49), Kolkata (9W618 at 3.46), Chennai (9W489 at 3.43), and Ahmedabad (9W411 at 5.10) could not approach the runway after arriving and made a go around while JA’s Raipur-Mumbai flight (9W378) was diverted to Vadodara (Baroda) however arrived in Mumbai at 02.16 pm.
The Ahmedabad runway too saw flight suspension due to similar reasons. Usually, flights diverted from Mumbai landed at Ahmedabad airport but this time, runway 05/23 was not serviceable due to edge lights which is why flights moved to Vadodara. Owing to the same reasons, a JA flight from Muscat and an Emirates flight from Dubai failed to land at Ahmedabad.
“Sometimes, visibility drops for a few seconds and sometimes, for some minutes and that is how it affects flights. At times, visibility was 800 m while at other times, it was 1,200 to 1,500 m. So, when the visibility dropped below 800, we stopped operations,” explained the air traffic controller.
