'Indian airports world’s most-delayed'

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Related Articles

AI staff will be redeployed, size to be cut by hal...Govt approaches Ratan Tata for heading AIAir India employees to get salaries by July 14Air India employees to get salaries by July 14

New York: An extra travel time needs to be budgeted to fly to India from overseas, with Indian airports emerging as the world’s most-delayed airports with most frequent late arrivals into the country in 2008, according to US magazine Forbes.

Country’s financial hub Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International and national capital’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airports have grabbed the first and second ranks in terms of late arrivals in the world’s most-delayed airports list compiled by Forbes.

“India takes the prize as the country with most frequent late arrivals in our second annual tallying of the world’s most-delayed airports,” Forbes said in its latest report.

Topping the list of the world’s most-delayed airport for the second year in a row, Mumbai’s international airport, saw just 49.95% of on-time arrivals. While about 58% of its late arrivals in 2008 were delayed by 30 minutes or more, the report said.

At New Delhi’s IGI airport, the percentage of on-time arrivals is 50.89% in 2008 and had seen 23.3 million passengers in previous year, based on data from FlightStats, which tracks historical and real-time flight information, Forbes said.

The report stated that India was a peculiar case as its biggest airports have undertaken massive construction projects to cope with the country’s rapid growth.

The most-delayed airport, Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International, opened a new taxiway in November to reduce the wait time for landing aircraft, while New Delhi’s IGI Airport fully opened a third runway in October.

Bengaluru International has been ranked at the fourth place in top five in the list with on-time arrivals of 60.16%. Quoting a spokesperson of Bengaluru International Airport, Forbes said that delayed arrivals in India were largely attributed to air congestion at a flight’s origin.

“There (Bengaluru International), 80 per cent of departures were on time in 2008, yet just 60% of flights arrived as scheduled,” the spokesperson told Forbes.