Mumbai: Flight fares likely to shoot up as airlines plans to cancel flights till March
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
