West India’s Mumbai airport is named as the busiest single runway airport in the world, breaking its own record when it touched 980 arrivals and landings in 24 hours on January 20th, 2018.
Before this Mumbai airport located in the capital city of Maharashtra has landed 974 flights of both national and international arena.
As it is India’s second largest airport has the record breaking numbers, Gatwick airport, UK’s second largest airport, is still the most efficient single-runway airport in the world.
According to statistics from UK’s Airport Coordination Ltd, the single runway of Gatwick Airport has declared an aircraft handling capacity of 870 flight movements per day for summer 2018. But, unlike Mumbai airport, which is functional 24 hours a day, Gatwick handles most of its flights in the 19 hours between 5am and midnight because of night time restrictions in force since 1971.
Gatwick Airport’s single-runway’s peak handling capacity is 55 air traffic movements (landings or take offs) an hour, while Mumbai Airport has touched 52 movements an hour. However, unlike Mumbai, which rarely handles 52 movements an hour, Gatwick runway frequently handles 55 movements/hour daily during the peak hours between 6 am and 7.50 am; 10 am and 1.50 pm and 3pm and 7.50 pm. Mumbai, on the other hand, handles an average of around 48 movements in peak hours.
According to the air traffic controller from Mumbai, the most important difference between Gatwick and Mumbai Airport is the environment of the two airport that are set in.
The Mumbai airport functions in a space-starved, infrastructure-constrained environment, unlike any other. There are more flights can’t be added onto Mumbai’s single runway without a holistic approach that takes into account the ground realities, India’s regulatory framework, human factors etc.
