Last week, 646 aircrafts landed/took-off from Mumbai International Airport in 24 hours. It’s a high, considering that only 4 months back, the air traffic movement hovered around 600. For India, it’s a big enough figure to go trumpet around. But put Mumbai Airport alongside international biggies like Heathrow or Hartsfield Atlanta & the comparisons turn embarrassing !
Passenger air traffic in India is so low that civil aviation minister Mr. Praful Patel has made it his favourite “putting in perspective” line. On more than one acassions, he has been heard saying. “Our country of 1.1 billion (yes ! !) has only 10 million flyers. If 100 million flew each year, we would need 2000 aircrafts.” All our commercial airlines together have a fleet of arount 270 aircrafts. In comparison, US’ one Airline – Southwest Airlines has a fleet of 468 birds ! !
Moving on – in terms of area, if the world’s biggest airports are as large as a cricket ground, Mumbai Airport would be used to play Pool ! !
In the top slot, by far, is the King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh – it covers 81 square miles. Denver International Airport at 53 sq. miles follows. Mumbai Airport measures 2.81 sq. miles – slums included. Remove the encroachments, and we are left with just 1.5 sq. miles of operational area.
Astonished ? Surprised ? Here’s more.
As for passenger traffic, Mumbai handled 17.4 million passengers from January to October. Hartsfield-Jackson, Atlanta handled 24.01 million only in 4 months from January 2006.
As we are comparing airport statistics and not the number of passengers who land/take-off from a city, it should be mentioned that Mumbai airport’s statistics speak for the city. Mumbai is perhaps the only big city – big in terms of population – that manages with 1 airport. New York has 3 – Kennedy, La Guardia & Newark. London beats it with 5 – Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, London City & Luton. Even the space starved Tokyo has Haneda & Narita.
We sure have a long way to fly before we can get anywhere near.
Thought for the Day
On a date, the guy always wonders whether he’ll get lucky that night. The girl already knows.
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