The Mumbai airport’s cross-runways will be closed for the second time on Tuesday for six hours in the afternoon along with the secondary runway that has been already shut till January 31.

Meanwhile, officials of the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) met on Friday to study the impact of the closure of runways.

According to airport officials, the MIAL officials are concerned about the delay in handing over of the main runway’s operation to Air Traffic Control (ATC).

Last Tuesday, airport officials had handed over the operation of the runway to ATC at 12:34 pm instead of 12.00 and at 18:16 pm instead 18:00 pm. “There was a substantial delay in handing over the runway last Tuesday by MIAL. This caused congestion in the sky as there were 8-10 aircrafts hovering over the airport,” said an airport official.

Although slots at the Mumbai airport have been reduced by over 100 on Tuesdays and there are no international flight movements during the stipulated hours, officials admitted that there was a certain amount of congestion in the airspace during the closing and opening hours. “The traffic is heavy in the opening hours. Even a minute’s delay translates into a lot of extra work in containing the flights in the airspace,” said the official.

MIAL officials said the matter has been blown out of proportion. “We handed over the main runway for operations 16 minutes late as we were inspecting the runway,” said an MIAL official.

“The runway intersection closure is a complex project and involves coordination among various agencies. We have done a thorough check to review the work done during intersection closure last Tuesday. The overall assessment was that things went largely as planned. A few areas of improvement have been identified and they will be resolved in the next closure,” said a spokesperson from MIAL.