One plane's tyre bursts at Mumbai airport runway, many get delayed and diverted

A flight experienced a technical fault in its landing gear on Thursday night

After a Jet Airways flight suffered a tyre burst on Thursday, the main runway of the Mumbai airport was shut for nearly 12 hours yesterday, which resulted in delays and diversions.

A flight experienced a technical fault in its landing gear on Thursday night

When usually every 150 seconds, two flights land or take off from the airport, Friday say every flight getting delayed by at least 40 minutes. Sources said some were even delayed by three hours as the secondary runway was operational. According to Air Traffic Control (ATC), six flights on Friday and four on Thursday night post the incident were diverted.

Also, the rain created further more trouble. An MIAL official said, "Whenever the secondary runway is used the number of flight are reduced from 48 per hour. Also, in this case, the bad morning weather added to the trouble as the wind shear created problems for aircraft operations."

An Air India Mumbai-Newark flight had to land in Ahmedabad to fill the fuel tank as that could not happen at Mumbai's secondary runway.

A Jet airways Delhi-Mumbai flight (9W354) experienced a technical fault in its landing gear on Thursday night. The aircraft was pushed back to the airline's hanger yesterday. A Jet Airways spokesperson said, "The flight reported a technical fault with the main landing gear after landing in Mumbai at 9:52 pm on Thursday. All 120 passengers and eight crew members were safely disembarked. As of 10 am today (Friday) the recovery operations have been completed and the aircraft has been shifted to the Jet Airways hanger. The airline has kept the DGCA informed about the event and is extending all co-operation. Jet Airways thanks DGCA, Mumbai International Airport Ltd., ATC and other stakeholders for their timely support." Officials also said the flight operations were expected to normalize after Friday midnight.