Soaring fuel price helps ease air traffic
The soaring aviation turbine fuel (ATF) price has led air fares to skyrocket and for various airlines to cancel flights on various routes. However, the silver lining to all this is that the air traffic has eased in the Mumbai skies and the waiting period to either land or take off has reduced significantly.
“The air traffic movement has fallen by 17% in the last three months at Mumbai airport,” said a senior air traffic control official. Mumbai airport which saw daily flight movements of 750 is now witnessing 615 landings and take-offs per day. “There are rare delays and even that is never beyond 15 to 20 minutes,” he added.
For every hour a plane hovers in the sky, it consumes almost 2,400 kg of extra ATF. “Earlier, the holding time for any flight would be at least 45 minutes, and sometimes even up to one-and-a-half hour. Thus, the price of fuel consumed was Rs1,36,026 per hour. Now, as the time has gone down to 20 minutes, the fuel consumption has come down to Rs49,464,” said a senior pilot of Jet Airlines.
Recently, when Natasha Sharma took a Mumbai-Kolkata-Guwahati flight from Mumbai airport on September 18, she was surprised when the flight took off almost five minutes before schedule. It was the same case when she returned on September 22.
“Earlier, I always landed in Mumbai 45 minutes late,” she said.
According to the national figures released by the civil aviation ministry, 29.22 lakh passengers flew in August, 2008, compared to 41.16 lakh in May this year. Moreover, with airlines cutting down on flight and consolidating flights, there are 8,856 weekly flights available to passengers compared to the earlier 11,000.
The soaring aviation turbine fuel (ATF) price has led air fares to skyrocket and for various airlines to cancel flights on various routes. However, the silver lining to all this is that the air traffic has eased in the Mumbai skies and the waiting period to either land or take off has reduced significantly.
“The air traffic movement has fallen by 17% in the last three months at Mumbai airport,” said a senior air traffic control official. Mumbai airport which saw daily flight movements of 750 is now witnessing 615 landings and take-offs per day. “There are rare delays and even that is never beyond 15 to 20 minutes,” he added.
For every hour a plane hovers in the sky, it consumes almost 2,400 kg of extra ATF. “Earlier, the holding time for any flight would be at least 45 minutes, and sometimes even up to one-and-a-half hour. Thus, the price of fuel consumed was Rs1,36,026 per hour. Now, as the time has gone down to 20 minutes, the fuel consumption has come down to Rs49,464,” said a senior pilot of Jet Airlines.
Recently, when Natasha Sharma took a Mumbai-Kolkata-Guwahati flight from Mumbai airport on September 18, she was surprised when the flight took off almost five minutes before schedule. It was the same case when she returned on September 22.
“Earlier, I always landed in Mumbai 45 minutes late,” she said.
According to the national figures released by the civil aviation ministry, 29.22 lakh passengers flew in August, 2008, compared to 41.16 lakh in May this year. Moreover, with airlines cutting down on flight and consolidating flights, there are 8,856 weekly flights available to passengers compared to the earlier 11,000.