Even judges left in the lurch by flight delays

Mumbai: Flight delays due to congestion at the airport affect not just the common public, but also judges. Hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against air traffic congestion at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, a Bombay high court division bench of Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice S C Dharmadhikari remarked that even they had been through such gruelling experience at Mumbai airport.
    The court also admonished the director general of civil aviation’s claims that the PIL was a technical issue. “This (air traffic congestion) cannot be brushed aside saying it is a technical matter. The matter is in public interest,’’ said the judges.
    The PIL, filed by Resources of Aviation Redressal Association, stated that due to the large number of flights scheduled to land at peak hours, arriving flights were not able to land immediately. This resulted in flights hovering over the airport, awaiting clearance from the Air Traffic Controller.
    The problem of congestion not just caused flight delays, but also led to wastage of fuel, the petition claimed. The PIL also alleged that there was a danger to the lives of passengers as well.
    The petitioners further objected to the use the airspace over the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), which they claimed was a threat to security.
    In its affidavit, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said that it was the Airport Authority of India (AAI) which was responsible for allocation of slots at Mumbai airport. The directorate general informed the court that airlines were allowed to operate only upon meeting norms with regard to operations, maintenance, safety and security.
    The affidavit stated that no new schedules (new flight routes) had been permitted at Mumbai airport since August 2006. It also pointed out that the ministry of civil aviation had approved new procedures for slot allocations at the airports, which would cut down delays in landing. The HC has scheduled further hearing on the issue on August 3. Day 4: Flight delays increase with heavy rain
Mumbai: Though the percentage of on-time departures for morning flights has gone up at the city airport as the new norms for mitigating flight delays were implemented early this week, on Thursday, with heavy rain, delays increased.
    “The delays went up a bit today due to rain but we don’t have the figures as of now,’’ said M G Junghare, general manager, Mumbai airport, adding that airlines have wizened up to the new norms. “If an arrival is late and the aircraft cannot operate the next departure on time, the airline flies with a revised time of departure. So it gets a revised slot before passengers board the aircraft,’’ he added. Technically, such a flight, which has a revised time of departure would not be recorded as having operated on time.
    “Following a delayed arrival or departure, we reschedule all the other flights of the particular aircraft,’’ said an airline official. Whether the passengers of the consequent flights get informed about the delay before they leave for the airport depends on how early the information comes in, he added.
    Getting the morning departures in order was a priority for air traffic control, which started implementing DGCA’s Air Transport Circular 10 of 2009, from Monday onwards to mitigate flight delays. Domestic flight arrivals at Mumbai airport start only after 7.30 am. But there are a total of 37 departures between 5.50 am and 7 am itself, bunched together in nine slots (see box). “Each departure takes three minutes. Thirty-seven departures means a minimum of 81 minutes. But the flight schedules listed demand that these 37 departures be operated in 70 minutes,’’ added Junghare. It is in this one critical hour that delays creep into flight schedules and send a cascading effect on departure timings. The 15 flights scheduled between 5.40 am and 6 am, always depart between 6 am and 7 am, bunching flights further.
    However, air traffic controllers have managed to overcome that in the last two days, despite a shutdown of operations on the secondary runway. “By having a minute-to-minute co-ordination with Approach Control, we managed to space the departures in that one critical hour and check delays to a great extent,’’ said Junghare.