Rains cause disruptions in flight, train schedules in Mumbai

MUMBAI: Heavy rains splashed travel and transportation in Mumbai awry, disrupting flight operations in and out of the city and local trains within.
Flights to Mumbai hovered in overcast skies around the airport, struggling with low visibility. There were delays of up to 30 minutes, that cascaded to connecting flights flying out of the city.

Mumbai is one of the two busiest airports in the country, the other being Delhi. The airport regularly faces problems of congestion leading to flight delays.

"Our flights have been delayed by 30-40 minutes due to weather disruptions," said a spokesman for Jet Airways.

Some Jet flights from Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai and Ahmedabad missed approaches to the runway, while a Raipur-Mumbai flight had to be diverted for a brief period to Baroda.

There were disruptions in neighbouring states too. Runway problems caused flight suspensions in Ahmedabad.

A senior executive at national carrier Air India also said there were delays but added no flights were cancelled. A spokeswoman at Vistara - the joint venture carrier of Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines - also said while there were delays, no flights were cancelled or diverted.

Local train schedules were deeply impacted due to waterlogging in and around stations. Mumbai has the busiest, most extensive suburban rail network in the country and one of the busiest in the world

"It took me three hours to reach office today, in a Bhandup-Bandra train commute that usually takes an hour," said Samarpita Banerjee, a journalist. "I was stuck between the successive stations of Kurla and Sion for close to two hours," she added.