The traffic at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Mumbai witnesses a 15% reduction in its traffic, reports Hindustan Times. The airport that generally manages around 1000 aircraft movements daily, now sees a net reduction of 150 arrivals and departures.
The primary reason for the reduction of traffic is the grounding of the aircraft by various airline service providers. There are also frequent cancellations of services, affecting passenger traffic. According to the report, around 92 aircraft, of airlines such as Air India, Alliance Air, Air India Express, Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet, GoAir and Air Asia-India are not flying.
Lack of spare parts to shortage of crew members lead to flight cancellations
SpiceJet recently got affected due to the banning of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. It had 13 of its flights in this popular Boeing model, which were grounded from the service after an announcement from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Other airline service providers including Air India face a severe shortage of pilots and crew members to provide the service. Jet Airways cited the lack of spare parts and its financial crunch for grounding its aircraft. IndiGo has grounded three of its aircraft from its fleet of 214 aircraft and will operate 30 fewer flights each day in the winter schedule as it battles shortage of pilots.
In February 2019, Mumbai airport reportedly witnessed a surge of air traffic when the carriers were forced to take detour due to airspace restrictions over Pakistan. According to a report by The Hindu, the air traffic them surged from 6% to 86% on as many as different routes.
Mumbai airport is the second-largest airport in India. It handled around 48.5 million passengers in 2018, according to the Association of Private Airport Operators. On the other hand, Delhi airport, India’s largest airport in terms of the passenger count, handled 65.7 million passengers in 2018. Projections show that the Mumbai airport will cross 52 million passenger milestone in FY2020.
