Mumbai airport expects operations to be normal by June 2

The Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) has said that with 80% of the instrument landing system (ILS) upgradation work having been completed, normal operations will resume by June 2.

ILS is a standard International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) precision landing aid that is used to provide guidance to aircraft to land on the runway under normal or adverse weather conditions. The work, being carried out from May 17 to June 5, will improve the precision while landing.

Senior officials confirmed that the upgradation work will be completed by Saturday after which ground testing will be done in order to check the upgraded system.

An airport official explained, “Upgradation work is being done on two components of the ILS, namely, glide path (vertical guidance element) and localiser (lateral component). While the work of glide path is completed, 20% of the localiser is yet to be completed. This work is aimed to be completed by Saturday.”

An Airports Authority of India (AAI) official said after the work is completed, detailed ground testing followed by another test will be conducted in order to ensure that the upgraded ILS is working as per the plan.

This will take a few days, after which the ILS will be made available in the city airport. “This means that the flight operations will then switch to ILS approach that will help the airport see no delays in flight operations,” the official said.

However, in the week after the upgradation work commenced, the airport reported that over 300 flights have been affected.

Officials said they are positive about completing the work three days before the declared date to bring the situation back to normal.

Average delay in departing as well as arriving flights noted on Thursday was 18 minutes and five minutes respectively. According to airport officials, routine maintenance work of the main runway 09-27 that is being conducted on Thursdays and Sundays as part of pre-monsoon repairs, was cancelled on Thursday.

The pre-monsoon routine maintenance work will be conducted from 10am to 4pm only on Sunday.