Rain effect: 5 flights from Mumbai diverted to Nagpur

NAGPUR: Air traffic congestion at Mumbai airport on Tuesday night due to heavy rains led to five flights being diverted to Nagpur. Despite steady rains almost through the night, local airport officials ensured that they catered to the unexpected demand.

Laxmi Narayanan, senior manager (operations and safety) at

Nagpur Airport

, said, “We had total five flights being diverted to Nagpur between 11pm and 1am. Four of them were domestic flights while the fifth was a

Bangkok Airways

flight.” Apart from the

Bangkok

flight, the other four included Air India (1), IndiGo (2) and Go Air (1).

Amit Kasatwar, senior manager (terminals) at the airport, said, “All flights have departed from Nagpur (see table). As of now, there’s no pending request. Considering the weather in Mumbai, we are prepared to handle emergency diversions to our airport.”

Vasant Barde, station manager, Air India (Nagpur), said, “Altogether 131 passengers were on board the flight that returned to Nagpur on Tuesday night. Of these, almost 70 were locals who returned to their homes while we made arrangements for the remaining at hotels and the terminal. They left on Wednesday morning in that same aircraft because it has a capacity of 182 which enabled us to accommodate even new passengers who were booked for the morning flight.”

Barde said there were quite a few cancellations as well for Wednesday’s flight. “Air India will waive off cancellation charges for those who were scheduled to fly on Wednesday and had booked ticket before Tuesday,” he said.

Narayanan said, “The Bangkok Air flight was an Airbus 320 and it does not carry too much extra fuel as there are multiple diversion points along the flight path. This flight landed just before midnight and departed around 5.30am.”

Nagpur Airport was also preparing to receive yet another big ticket craft but the request did not go through. “A

Boeing

craft from China was also supposed to land and we had agreed to the request also. Later, the craft was taken somewhere else,” said Narayanan.