Mumbai Airport ranks as the least punctual amid the four metro cities

The Mumbai Airport has been ranked the worst among the four metro cities in terms of flight regularity. This might be the worst on-time performance (OTP) recorded by Mumbai Airport in February in the last three years.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) described that the on-time performance of the Indian airlines was lowest in Mumbai during February. OTP is the arrival and departure within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.

48.9 per cent of SpiceJet flights were on time whereas Vistara was at the lowest at 34.5 per cent in Mumbai. 

All the Indian carriers had better OTP in Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. The OTP of Air India dropped to 45.6 per cent during February from 59.1 per cent in the similar period the previous year. However, SpiceJet saw a drastic fall from 75.2 per cent to 48.9 per cent. In 2017, the OTP of the airlines in the domestic flights was the worst in Mumbai terminal.

Aviation expert Vipul Saxena told Hindustan Times,

Insufficient rapid exit taxiways, paucity of parking bays for wide-bodied aircraft, reduced length of the main runway and longer approach paths owing to high-rises are various constraints. A special performance benchmark study should be done for the Mumbai airport. Ideally, a performance benchmark study of all metro airports should be done before the comparative study.”

GoAir was the lowest of all with 70.5 per cent, whereas Vistara was the highest with 84.6 per cent in Mumbai during 2017. In 2015, the lowest OTP of 67.3 per cent was recorded by Air India and maximum of 80.5 per cent was reported by SpiceJet.

The Mumbai airport has cross runways, which confines traffic as only one runway can be used at a time. Due to the shortage, the number of flight movements is lowered and hence the delay. The experts argued that it was an imbalanced judgment to compare Mumbai space-cramped airport with those in other cities.

The Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Jayant Sinha said in January that the Mumbai airport is the most bottlenecked single-runway airport, undermining the growth of aviation.