Capacity enhancement at Mumbai Airport

The land-locked Mumbai airport, Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA), was anticipating strong air traffic growth demand at a time when the airport operation was perceived to be reaching capacity. As a result, it was potentially limiting the future growth aspirations not only for the airport operator, Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL), but also for the airlines and the wider Maharashtra economy. MIAL recognised this challenge, and NATS was requested to provide an independent performance and capacity review to benchmark the airfield capacity and to determine the changes necessary to enhance the airport operation

NATS delivered a combined on the ground and data driven assessment of the airport’s capacity,

and used advanced simulation techniques to quantify the benefits of performance enhancement recommendations. NATS also delivered a change roadmap to the MIAL management team, and then supported them with the implementation of the roadmap to help achieve the defined levels of additional capacity. This included, perhaps counter-intuitively, the effective closure of the 2nd cross-runway to maximise the efficiency of the high intensity runway operation of a single runway. This was also undertaken in close collaboration with the airlines and AAI.

The Results

CSIA is now the busiest single runway operation in the world (by total number of movements over a 24 hour daily operation). US$100 million increased annual revenue due to airport capacity enhancement.

2010 – Airport perceived to be at capacity, with 28.1m passengers, 239,000 movements, 38 movement peak hourly capacity achieved, ~700 movements per day, 59% punctuality.

2015 – Airport recognised as having ‘headroom’ for further growth, with 36.6m passengers, 269,456 movements, 50+ movement peak hourly capacity achieved, daily record of 851 movements in May, 74% punctuality