Heavy rains affected the flight operations at the Mumbai airport on Monday, the second time in less than a month, causing delays.
According to sources, rains had led to a pothole on one of the taxiways, forcing the airport authorities to shut the main runway and resulting in delays in aircraft movement.
This was the second time in less than a month that the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL), the GVK-led joint venture airport company, had to shut the main runway, 009/27, for operations.
The runway remained out of use for over three hours this morning following which the operations were shifted to the capacity-constrained secondary runway –14/32.
A source said:
As a result, both arrivals and departures were affected with the incoming flights reporting an average delay of two hours, while departures getting delayed by almost an hour till the afternoon.
However, a spokesperson of the MIAL said the runway closure resulted in a delay of "half an hour".
Confirming the development of the pothole on a taxiway due to rains, the spokesperson said the main runway was shut for operations at 6 am and the services could be resumed only at 10 am after the problem was fixed.
The traffic at the main runway was finally restored at 10 am.
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