Mumbai Airport sets record with 1,032 daily flights on Diwali weekend

On November 11, the Diwali weekend, the Mumbai airport achieved a remarkable feat by managing a record-breaking 1,032 flight movements in a single day on its sole runway. This surpassed its previous record of 1,004 arrivals and departures set on December 09, 2018. After facing a five-year lull due to airline closures and the pandemic, the Mumbai airport has successfully returned to handling over a thousand arrivals and departures daily. Although the Mumbai airport has two runways that criss-cross each other, only one is utilised at a time, technically placing Mumbai in the single-runway airport category. In contrast to other major metro airports with parallel runways in simultaneous use, such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, London Heathrow, New York-JFK, Singapore-Changi, Dubai, and Sydney, Mumbai operates as one of the busiest single-runway airports globally, alongside airports like Gatwick-London. With the surge in flight movements, the number of passengers also saw a significant increase. During the Diwali weekend from November 11 to 13, 2023, the airport experienced a rise in passenger traffic, recording a total of 516,562 passenger movements. Out of these, 350,000 were domestic passengers, and 162,000 boarded international flights. Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) reported that the airport accommodated 2,894 flights, comprising 2,137 domestic flights and 757 international flights. The top destinations during this three-day period were Delhi, Bengaluru, and Chennai for domestic flights, while international flights favoured destinations like Dubai, London, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore. Setting a new single-day air traffic movement record at 1,032 flights on November 11, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) served a total of 161,419 passengers on that day. This influx included 107,765 domestic passengers and 53,680 international passengers. In 2018, the Mumbai airport achieved its first instance of handling over 1,000 flight movements in June, reaching its pinnacle in December. Subsequently, the suspension of operations by Jet Airways in April 2019 led to a decline in air and passenger traffic from Mumbai. Only in 2019 has air traffic surpassed four digits for the Mumbai airport, marking a significant recovery since the challenges faced in the preceding years.