A decade later and Mumbai airport still worst for on-time performance

Three out of six airlines monitored for On-Time Performance at airports had Mumbai at the bottom of the data charts amongst the four metros in India.

The reports released by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for air traffic reports on March 18 showed that most airlines had the worst OTP in Mumbai airports which either ranked last or second last.

For Air India, IndiGo and Vistara, OTP at Mumbai was 59.1%, 73.9% and 66.3% respectively.  The other airlines of Go Air, SpiceJet and Jet Airways and Jet Lite had OTP at Mumbai at 70.8%, 75.2% and 66.1% respectively.

National carrier, Air India had the worst OTP among all other airlines in February at 66.2%.

Image Source: DGCA report

Congestion at Mumbai airport has long been a cause for concern and was also rated ‘the world’s worst for timely arrivals,’ along with Delhi in an article by Forbes dated January 14, 2008.

The airport has consistently been rated the worst for OTP over the years.

Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport has 35 airlines flying to major cities across the country and handled 13,100 domestic and 9,500 International passengers daily on an average as per Airports Authority of India (AAI) data.

A flight is considered to be ‘delayed’ if it arrived or departed 15 minutes later than scheduled.

The Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) in Mumbai had 2,594 flights delayed beyond 15 minutes which amounted to 31% of 8,271 total flight departures, its air traffic data for February showed.

Total arrivals in the airport were 8,275 the CSIA report showed out of which 2,894 were delayed. This was 35% of the total arrivals.

Major reason for delays was shown as ‘reactionary reasons’ in the DGCA report wherein 67% of total airlines either had check-in errors or baggage trouble, as per the definition of IATA for ‘reactionary reasons.’

In the CSIA report Jet Airways had the most amount of flights delayed at Mumbai airport for ‘reactionary reasons.’

Mumbai airport had a better OTP in the month of January with market leader, IndiGo having 39.5% market share reported OTP for its flights from Mumbai as the second best among the metros at 70.9%.

Passenger traffic for the month of February fell in comparison to the previous month and grew year-on-year with passengers carried by domestic airlines amounting to 86.55 lakhs. January passengers of domestic flights were 95.79 lakhs.

Image Source: DGCA report

“Passengers carried by domestic airlines during Jan-Feb 2017 were 182.34 lakhs as against 151.31 lakhs during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 20.51 %,” DGCA report said.