Mumbai’s severely constrained airport and its obstacle-filled surrounding is proving to be a damper for long haul flights out of the mega city. Air India has a daily nonstop on Mumbai-Newark route. But it has now started taking a technical or fuelling halt at Vienna for this flight as the full length of the runway is not available and the airline says some hoardings and tall trees are yet to be removed and pruned, respectively.
“Due to these constraints, our 342-seater Boeing 777-300 extended range (ER) deployed on this route is not able to take off with a full load from Mumbai for the almost 16 hour flight to Newark (airport in New York’s neighbouring New Jersey). A number of factors have led to this technical halt full length of runway not being available; obstacles in take off flight path and bad weather at destination due to which we need to carry more fuel,“ said a senior official.
The Mumbai Airport did not comment on the story till the time of filing this report.
Apart from AI, American carrier United is the only other airline to fly nonstop from Mumbai to US and these two are the longest flights out of Mumbai. United deploys a Boeing 777-200 long range (LR) on this route. This aircraft is still flying nonstop as this aircraft has larger fuel tank and seats fewer people, due to which its full load is lesser than AI’s ER.
AI has for a long time been raising the issue of obstacles around the Mumbai airport with authorities due to which it constantly faces issues in operating the B 777-300 ER on this route with a full load. About two years back it used to fly with a “load penalty“ meaning with 80 seats empty and less cargo to be able to fill up fuel required for the nonstop journey . But with this flight reporting good occupancy, AI decided not to offload passengers and lose money but take a fuelling halt in Vienna. “The authorities in Mumbai have done majority of the things that need to be done to clear obstacles around the airport like removing hoardings. But that work has not been done fully and some hoardings still need to go, apart from some trees requiring pruning,” said a senior AI official.
The airline had earlier complained about these “safety risks” to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation around Mumbai Airport.
