March 21, 2007: Come summer, and the Dehi and Mumbai airports will see no fresh activity for a seven-month period. The ban would apply to any new flight that an airline wants to operate during the peak hours, according to report.

With the government decided to freeze at the existing levels the number of flights that can be operated by domestic airlines from these two airports during the forthcoming summer season, the activity at these two busy airplane pads are to be frozen. The Delhi and Mumbai airports, there were about 3,200 aircraft movements in a week during the summer schedule of 2005, up from 2,400-2,500 in the preceding schedule, a report said.

The move comes following reports of increasing congestion. However, there has been no clarity in the ‘peak hours’ criterion as the two airports that are the busiest in India. It is being rumored that the government may fix the peak hours criterion to between 7 am and 10 am 6 pm to 10 pm.

Officials are of the opinion that the Delhi and Mumbai airports cannot handle more than 30 flights an hour. They believe that some steps will have to be taken to ensure that congestion at these airports is kept to a bare minimum and that proper infrastructure needs to be created.

Congestion has become a recurring headache for authorities and a solution being mooted is to allow Delhi airport to increase to four hours in the morning the time during which simultaneous use of both runways would be permitted. Meanwhile, the Delhi International Airport Ltd has plans to allow use of simultaneous runway during the evening hours.

Far off in Mumbai, the airport operator has lined up measures to allow the use of the cross runway. This when implemented is likely to aid in easing the problems faced by airlines while flying from and to the city.