On October 29, two aircraft, one belonging to Kingfisher Airlines and the other to Air India, headed for a collision on the ground at 11:45pm. Air India’s Nagpur-Mumbai flight IC-630 had just landed and vacated the runway through taxiway N8 while Kingfisher’s Mumbai-Delhi flight IT-315 was passing through taxiway L1, which is perpendicular to N8.
Thankfully, the pilots of both planes saw each other from a distance and halted. But the outcome could have been much worse. The reason for this goof-up: Mumbai airport does not have a surface movement radar (SMR).
Currently, the nation’s busiest airport is dealing with runway reconstruction and unavailability of adequate taxiways. The situation desperately calls for an SMR, the lack of which has resulted in several ground accidents over the past month.
“There were at least two cases of safety violation at Mumbai airport in the first week of October,” said an official of the air traffic control (ATC). “In one, a fire tender crossed the runway when a flight was about to take off. In the second, an aircraft was hit by a catering truck while heading for the international apron.”
With the unavailability of taxiways, incoming and outgoing aircrafts often have to use the same taxiways. Mumbai’s ATC handles more than 600 flights a day and it is difficult for it to keep track of ground movements without an SMR.
“With repairs and closure of the secondary runway 14:32, lesser taxiways and drainage repair work, the insides of the airport have been dug up,” the ATC official said.
The SMR was to be installed at the airport by August this year. But, according to a source, the installation will take more than a year and will only happen after the ATC tower is moved from inside the airport to a new site near Hotel Sahara Star, Santa Cruz.
When contacted, a spokesperson for Mumbai International Airport Limited (Mial), the company that runs the airport, said the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has procured the SMR and will be installing it shortly.
RC Chitkara, regional director of the AAI, refused to speak as he was on vacation.
