Rain puts flights on 17-minute hold

With rains pouring interminably since last morning, the first shivers of the Mumbai monsoon were felt by air travellers yesterday as several flights were delayed.

Operations at the Mumbai airport were suspended for close to half an hour.
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A few passengers even missed their flight, having been stuck in endless traffic snarls, thanks to waterlogged streets.

The visibility at the airport was drastically reduced, leading to delay in flight departures.
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Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA), which handles more than 700 flight arrivals and departures every day, had to abort the operations for at least 17 minutes due to poor visibility.

"Due to a certain drop in the visibility, all flight operations were suspended at the CSIA between 1000-1017 hrs," said CSIA spokesperson.

The average delay in operation remained between 15-20 minutes. As many as six flights were delayed by 30-40 minutes. However the operations normalised in the afternoon.

According to an Air Traffic Control official, the density of rainfall was low or the situation would have been worse. "It was raining since morning, but the density of rain was not very high.

Otherwise, the situation could have become more serious," he said. Sanjay Sharma, a trader from Delhi, missed his flight due to the traffic jam. "I had a meeting at Byculla after which I left for the airport to catch my 2.10 pm flight.
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Even though I left an hour and 45 minutes prior to the departure, I reached the airport half an hour before and the airline denied me the boarding pass. I have booked a 5.30 flight now."

Slippery terrain
A Kingfisher Airlines aircraft on its way from Bhavnagar, with 42 passengers skidded off the runway at Mumbai airport. No one was hurt.