Aviation News

Flight fares likely to shoot up as airlines plans to cancel flights till March, ET Infra

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The Ministry on Civil Aviation on Tuesday said that it had to force Mumbai Airport to reduce flights as the airport had given excessive slots which was causing congestion leading to a situation where aircraft are hovering above the airport for as long as 60 minutes.

An airport slot is a period of time during which an aircraft can take off or land.

It said that the airport operator didn’t take steps to streamline and regulate the air traffic movements.

“ The government realises that it needs to step in to strike a balance between the needs of both the airport operators and airlines while ensuring that passengers have a fulfilling experience while flying from Mumbai Airport,” the ministry of civil aviation said.

The government’s reaction comes after passengers criticised the government’s decision saying that such an action will lead to air fare on routes to shoot up.

Airlines are preparing to cancel hundreds of flights till March 30 following the directive issued by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) to the Mumbai airport to ease runway congestion. The direction of reducing the number of flights will force airlines to cut around 40 flights from middle of this week, ET reported on Tuesday.

The curfew on operation of business jets at the airport has been extended from four hours to eight hours- leading to protests from top corporate houses like Reliance, JSW and Mahindra group.

Mumbai operates more flights with than any airport with a single runway and in December handled its highest-monthly traffic of 4.88 million passenger

Akasa Air on Tuesday announced it was cancelling two flights daily till the end of next month

“Flight operations of airlines to/from Mumbai are expected to be impacted with guidelines being implemented to reduce runway congestion at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai. Considering this impact, we have to rationalise our network resulting in cancellation of two flights from 15th February to 30th March 2024,” an airline spokesperson said.

The airline added that providing the affected passengers with the option to either rebook or get a full refund for their tickets as compensation. The passengers who choose the former option can rebook their tickets for any date until April 15, 2024.

SpiceJet said in a statement that the airline will comply with the government’s directive, but did not specify the number of flights it was cancelling.

The decision to cut flights was taken after civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia raised concerns over on-time departures plummeting at the airport.

The ministry said that an analysis by Airport Authority of India found that aircraft movement at the airport during peak hour (from 8 AM to 11 AM & 5 PM to 8 PM was almost equivalent to air traffic permitted per hour during the remaining 18 hours of the day. In addition to the above slots, business jets & military aircraft operations were also allowed without any restrictions.

When aircraft hover above the airport due to congestion it burns excess fuel which increases cost of operations. “It is to be understood that such increase in fuel cost would eventually be borne by the consumers. This also has a cascading effect on the efficiency of airports operations leading to a longer wait time, inordinate delays, affecting both passengers and airlines adversely,” the ministry said.

  • Published On Feb 14, 2024 at 07:23 AM IST

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