Mumbai: The economic slowdown and the soaring aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices have been giving the aviation industry heartburns. The Mumbai airport has already witnessed a 12% fall in air traffic since June this year. And after the recent Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines alliance, the number is expected to fall by another 10%.

However, the proverbial silver lining to all this is that the air traffic will ease in the Mumbai skies and the waiting period to land or take off will reduce significantly. In other words, passengers are less likely to face delays at the countrys busiest airport.

With Jet and Kingfisher entering into code-sharing and route rationalisation, air traffic at Mumbai airport will fall to 554 from the current 615 flights. "Jet plans to reduce 26% international and 15% domestic flights. The Mumbai effect would be that around 60 flights will be off its skies," said a senior air traffic control (ATC) official.

"As such, the air traffic at Mumbai airport was reduced from 700 daily flights in June to 650 flight from July and 615 in September," he added.

The move should excite frequent flyers as it will further reduce the go around time for flights. "Before June 2008,the average go-around time for flights at Mumbai airport was 40-45 minutes. By September, it went down to 15-20 minutes in extreme delays. Now, the flights may actually land on time," said the official.

On the other hand, the reduced air traffic will not only benefit passengers but also the airlines, which spend several lakh of rupees on fuel. For instance, for every hour a plane hovers in the sky, it consumes almost 2,400 kg of extra ATF. Hence, the price of fuel consumed is Rs1,36,026 per hour. Now, since the time has gone down to nearly 20 minutes, the fuel consumption has also reduced to Rs49,464.

Though the fuel consumption may have come down, the aviation sector is now concerned about the drastic decrease in passenger traffic. According to the figures released by civil aviation ministry, the passenger traffic has decreased to 27 lakh in September compared to 29.22 lakh in August.

"With the increase in air fares and fewer flights, the number of passengers have decreased significantly since the last three months," said the ATC official.

Source : DNA