Unsung Heroes
Some of Unsung heros in the entire India-Pakistan escalation are the Mumbai Airport and its staff.
Nobody's talking about it, but they should be!
While, of course, the media and all of us zoomed in on missiles, ceasefires, the politics and military operations, Mumbai ATC was holding India's sky together.
Silently! Seamlessly!!
Here's what happened.
After Pakistan's airspace ban and shutdown of several airports across North India, flights through Mumbai's airspace surged by over 60%!
Mumbai airport handles about 750 international overflights daily, domestic flights aparts. That too with one criss-cross runway.
But now, during Indo-Pak disturbances, it had to manage 1,200 flights, pushing the total daily traffic in Mumbai's airspace beyond 2,000 flights (when combined with the airport's 900+ movements and domestic overflights)
Just imagine, in the time span of 24 hours which is 1440 minutes, they managed Air Traffic of more than 2000 flights!
Hardly a minute per flight!!
Even international airlines like British Airways, Lufthansa, Thai Airways International, etc. had to find new flight paths, most of which were via BOM.
Imagine 10 planes trying to land at once. Imagine if even one miscalculation happened.
One wrong clearance.
One delay too long.
Keeping the airport open and operational as usual is crucial for aircrafts' movement but also a sense of normalcy.
And, one miscalculation by the ATC would've been disastrous. And, spun globally as, "India can't handle war-time coordination!"
So, while we salute our Army and Air Force,
let's also take a moment to salute the controllers, ground staff, and operations teams at Mumbai Airport.
They didn't fight. But they stopped panic from spreading.
And in a way, that's moral building strategy too.
P.S: Not every hero wears a uniform. Some wear headsets, carry logbooks, and save the day 30,000 feet above ground!
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