The monsoon repair and maintenance of the busy Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA), Mumbai runways wqs concluded on Thursday evening with normal flight operation resumptions from 5 pm onwards for all scheduled flights.
The airport operator Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) had announced a six hour closure of the airside operations for runway repair and maintenance work. “The maintenance began at 1100hrsand after thorough assessment and evaluation, both runways – RWY 14/32 & 09/27 – are now fully operational for all flight movements starting from 1700hrs,” said MIAL statement.
CSMIA is the busiest single runway airport in the world, with over 950 air traffic movements daily with monsoon maintenance for operational efficiency and passenger convenience focused on resilience against Mumbai rains.
The airport operator took preventive actions to be ready for the annual monsoon challenges and conducted multiple runway inspections. “Various pre-monsoon measures were implemented, including the identification and inspection of waterlogged areas, health checks of runways by both machine and manual observation to detect superficial cracks, disjoints, and texture irregularities,” said MIAL spokesperson.
The maintenance and repair work included servicing of all the 5,000 aeronautical ground lights on runways and taxiways along with the removal and repainting of 1,300 ground markings providing directional guidance to aircraft. The repair works around the runway focused on segregating electric cables for the primary and secondary runway, minor and major repairs on runway intersections, and complex tasks such as the Geotechnical survey by civil engineers for runway 14/32, were completed in record time to resume normal air traffic movement.
The maintenance crew opened 2000 drains and duct banks across the runways for inspection and cleaned to ensures the integrity of cables, underground utilities and the proper functioning of the aeronautical lighting system essential for aircraft navigation.
The crew also was assigned for grass cutting, chamfering, milling and filling around the runways.
The annual monsoon maintenance and repair exercise enables Mumbai Airport uninterrupted operations for flight schedules on time performance qnd zero cancellation due to inclement weather.
Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) is managed by Ad. Airport Holdings Limited (AAHL) if Ad. Group in a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) venture between AAHL, holding a majority stake of 74%, and the Airports Authority of India, holding the rest 26%.
