Only one runway,Mumbai airport gasps for breadth

In 2006,Mumbai handled 129 flights more per day than Delhi,a gap that narrowed swiftly until Delhi overtook Mumbai in 2008. Next year,Delhi is set to handle 96 flights more per day than Mumbai as major airlines such as Air India announce new flights out of Delhi.

Congestion and lack of infrastructure is being blamed for frequent incidents at Mumbai airport such as near-misses; eight such incidents reported since 2008 including one involving IAF choppers carrying President Pratibha Patil and her team.

Mumbai airport handled 25.6 million passengers in 2009 against its capacity of 25 million; ongoing modernisation will raise capacity to 40 million in 2012-13 but passenger movement forecast to exceed that within about a year.

Survey launched in 2007 to relocate slums that have encroached on 276 acres of airport land abandoned midway; fresh survey launched six months back also stopped after local opposition

THE WRITING is all over Mumbais Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport CSIA.

What was not long ago Indias aviation hub and gateway to the world is now a prime example of a critical infrastructure system that has burst at its seams. And even as the Union Environment Ministry and the Maharashtra Government continue their face-off over building a new airport in Navi Mumbai,with yet another round of talks scheduled this week,captains of business and industry warn that every days delay in approving the new airport is doing immeasurable harm to the financial capital.

Its not as if the crisis fell from the sky one muggy Mumbai morning. Ever since a clutch of new airlines entered the industry in the middle of the last decade and triggered an aviation boom with their low fares in a surging economy,experts had forecast that passenger growth would soar past the capacity of CSIA in 2008-09 and a new airport was an urgent necessity.

Which is exactly what happened.

From 2004-05 to 2007-08,with annual passenger growth rates averaging more than 18 percent,traffic almost doubled in the space of only four years. And despite a slowdown in 2008 due to the global financial crisis and high oil prices,in 2009,CSIA handled 25.6 million passengers against its capacity of 25 million.

All talk now at Mumbai International Airport Ltd MIAL,the GVK Group-led consortium which is modernising and operating CSIA since 2006,is focused on the renovation and rebuilding which will push the capacity of the airport to 40 million passengers per year in 2012-13. But again,forecasts show that passenger growth will surge past that mark in 2014,with total passengers estimated to pass through CSIA in 2014-15 put at 45.6 million,according to data with Bombay First,a public-private partnership which is pushing for Mumbais makeover and includes some of the citys most well-known corporate residents.

The root of almost all of CSIAs woes are traced to the limited amount of land on which it is located in what is arguably the centre of an already cramped city. And the biggest restriction this imposes is that it does not allow the construction of an additional runway which could nearly double the number of flight movements per hour from the current average of 32.

Although CSIA has two runways,they cut across each other like the letter X. This makes it impossible for both runways to be used simultaneously and even their alternate use in close proximity has sparked fears of accidents for pilots in the absence of perfect co-ordination and an understaffed Air Traffic Control.

Mumbai airports biggest constraint is its runway, says Amber Dubey,Director,Aerospace and Defence,at consulting firm KPMG. With two cross runways,it can handle just around 32-34 aircraft movements per hour today. With its third runway operational,Delhis peak capacity has increased to above 50 movements per hour,with a possibility to increase further with improvements in air traffic management. This just highlights the growing difference between the capacity at Delhi and Mumbai Airports. Mumbai desperately needs a second airport.

Agrees K Roy Paul,a former Civil Aviation Secretary. Whatever you do with the existing airport in Mumbai,it will not help beyond a point, Paul told The Indian Express. The biggest problem with CSIA is that it cannot have more than the existing number of runways. Many alternatives were discussed in the past,but experts said that even if you clear all the slums,you wouldnt have enough land to build a parallel runway. Here we are talking about two parallel runways when Heathrow has six parallel runways.

While Heathrows modernisation has seen its three pairs of parallel runways being reduced to just two large runways and a third smaller runway,all of which together can handle more flights than in the past,Mumbai pales even in comparison to other major Indian airports. Delhi has three parallel runways,Kolkata has two parallel runways and Chennai has a cross runway like in Mumbai plus space for a parallel runway which is due for construction. The new,greenfield airports in Hyderabad and Bangalore have just one runway but both have space for a second which will be built when traffic grows.

In fact,the congestion,chaos and lack of infrastructure at CSIA has already contributed its share of scares over the last three years,with eight incidents,as they are called by the airline industry,being reported since 2008. One of them involved three IAF helicopters carrying President Pratibha Patil and her entourage in February 2009. A disaster was averted at the last minute as an Air India Airbus with 150 passengers aborted take-off after spotting one of the three choppers landing on the runway.

The error was later attributed to a lack of clear communication between all parties involved. But it also focused attention on the fact that CSIA does not have separate space for even VVIP choppers to land unlike at other major airports in the country,forcing them to land on the runway.

Yet another equally alarming problem,airline officials and aviation experts say,is the amount of time aircraft have been forced to hold in the air before landing in Mumbai due to the congestion on ground. And this one flies in the face of the environmental concerns being cited to hold back approval for the new airport,they add.

Since late 2008,the average holding time for an aircraft at CSIA the amount of time it has to hover around its destination before space can be found for it to land and park has been about 30 minutes. Taking into account the amount of extra fuel a plane is forced to burn and the cost of other inputs and the resulting delays,the loss to an airline per flight works out to Rs 1-1.5 lakh per landing,says KPMGs Dubey.

Over a years duration,at 300 arrivals a day,it works out to more than Rs 1,000 crore being spent extra by airlines even at the lower end of the scale. And that is one-tenth the cost of the proposed new airport,which is pegged at around Rs 10,000 crore. Airlines say that since the end of 2008,the cost of operating a flight to Mumbai shot up 10-15 percent compared to other airports and to previous years. Then,there is the blow to the environment too,with each litre of aviation fuel burnt producing an estimated 2.6 kg of carbon dioxide.

A single aisle aircraft like a Boeing 737 or Airbus A-320,which dominate the Indian skies,burns roughly about 3,000 litres of fuel per hour on the lower side and at that rate,flying an extra 30 minutes translates to an additional 3,900 kg of carbon dioxide being released into the skies around Mumbai by every hovering flight.

Clearly,South Asias busiest airport by the number of passengers handled is not only its most congested as well but could also be the most polluting despite handling fewer flights compared to Delhi,which handles the most flights in the subcontinent,experts said.

Theres an urgent need for a second airport in Mumbai, said Sushil Jiwarajka,Chairman of the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industrys FICCI Western Regional Council. I dont understand why we wasted so many years arguing about the need for a second airport. The existing airport has already reached the saturation point. The new airport should have come up five years ago. If we dont set up a new airport on a priority basis,the city of Mumbai will lose its importance and prominence.