Original Mumbai case study

Mumbai Airport

This is the original Mumbai Airport study, built from the ADS-B analysis rather than the archived 5-minute snapshot. It reads the airport as a system: rhythm, fleet mix, corridors, and turnover.

Original case study Archive hub Archived 5-minute snapshot

Coverage 152 days Distinct sampled days from 2018-10-01 through 2026-03-02.

Airport events 21,923 Filtered landings and takeoffs near Mumbai Airport.

Handoff 1.5 min Median landing-to-next-takeoff gap, the cleanest rhythm number in the set.

Ground time 96.5 min Median same-aircraft landing-to-takeoff gap, showing quick reuse.

Scope Rhythm Fleet Corridors Turnover Pulse Calendar Appendix Takeaway

Landings 12,723 More than half of the airport events in the filtered sample.

Takeoffs 9,200 Still dense, but less than the arrival side.

Airspace time 34.5 / 25.1 Median landing runs versus takeoff runs in minutes.

Registration split 72.9 / 24.8 Indian-registered versus foreign-registered movements.

Scope

What the sample covers

Read this as

152 distinct sampled days	Rhythm, corridor shape, and reuse
21,923 airport-proximate events	Filtered landings and takeoffs near BOM
1,070 unique aircraft	The actual fleet moving through the sample

Coverage note

Range	2018-10-01 to 2026-03-02
Shape	Sampled days with month-edge spillover
Why it works	Enough structure to show the airport pattern clearly

Distinct sampled days by year — The archive is not continuous, but it is broad enough to show how the sample is distributed across years.

Rhythm

Hourly shape and peak slots

Summed hourly view

Top 3 busy	Movements
07:00	1,086
20:00	1,074
17:00	1,073

Quiet slots	Movements
03:00	246
02:00	579
01:00	638

Average-per-day view

Top 3 busy	Avg/day
17:00	30.7
18:00	30.5
07:00	30.2

Quiet slots	Avg/day
03:00	7.7
05:00	10.5
02:00	18.1

Total sampled movements by hour in Mumbai airspace — Total sampled movements by hour. Morning and evening banks are the strongest blocks.

Average hourly movements on a sampled day — Average-per-day shape. The exact peak shifts slightly, but the banked rhythm stays the same.

Hourly landing and takeoff balance — Landing and takeoff counts stay close in the active hours, then widen in the quiet overnight band.

Fleet

Who carries the traffic

Top airline prefixes

Prefix	Movements
IGO	55,050
AIC	20,892
VTI	9,789
AKJ	6,923
UAE	5,057

Seat-capacity lens

Type	Share of estimated seats
A20N	29.8%
A21N	20.5%
B77W	8.9%
B38M	8.4%
A320	7.6%

Repeat registrations

Registration	Movements
VT-IMX	576
VT-YAC	573
VT-TNV	557
VT-ITN	539
VT-YAB	537

Airline dominance chart for Mumbai airport — IndiGo leads by a wide margin, with Air India and the rest of the regular carrier set behind it.

Estimated seat capacity by aircraft type — The A320 family still dominates once movement counts are weighted by seats.

Repeat aircraft registrations in the Mumbai sample — The same registrations keep returning, which is another sign of a tightly reused fleet.

Corridors

Where the sky is reused

Landing starts

East-side approach corridor	Ghatkopar / Thane side
Low approach points	Near 19.09, 72.94
Meaning	Arrival begins well before the runway

Takeoff starts

West-side departure strip	Airport-facing corridor
Launch points	19.09, 72.81 to 72.87
Meaning	Climb stays compact near the field

Overall Mumbai traffic density map — The overview map shows the same thing at city scale: the sky is reused through a small set of pathways, not the whole compass.

Landing direction map for Mumbai airport — Landing headings cluster into the approach-side axis.

Takeoff direction map for Mumbai airport — Takeoff headings stay tight near the field edge before fanning out.

Turnover

How fast the airport resets

Spacing metrics

Metric	Value
Landing → next takeoff	1.5 min median
Landing same-type gap	2.58 min median
Takeoff same-type gap	3.0 min median

Aircraft reuse

Metric	Value
Same-aircraft ground time	96.5 min median
Time in airspace, landing	34.5 min median
Time in airspace, takeoff	25.1 min median

Spacing between consecutive landings and takeoffs — Same-type spacing stays in the low-minute range on both sides of the operation.

Landing to next takeoff turnaround gap — The landing-to-next-takeoff handoff is the shortest operational gap in the set.

Ground time for the same aircraft returning to takeoff — The same aircraft usually comes back in roughly an hour and a half, which fits a high-frequency rotation airport.

Time aircraft spend in the airport flow — Landings stay visible longer than takeoffs, which matches the longer approach phase.

Pulse

Minute bursts and dense hour cells

Minute bursts

Metric	Value
Peak minute	6 movements
Minutes with 5+ movements	12
Minutes with 4+ movements	53
Median minute load	1 movement
95th percentile minute load	2 movements

Dense day-hour cells

Cell	Movements
2025-03-01 07:00	65
2025-02-01 18:00	63
2025-05-01 07:00	62
2025-02-01 21:00	61
Median day-hour cell	23 movements

Movements by minute burst chart — The minute chart shows the sharp edge of the airport rhythm: bursts are rare, but when they happen they are compact.

Heatmap of movement counts by day and hour — The day-hour heatmap shows which sampled days carry the heaviest hourly pressure.

Calendar

Weekday split and registration mix

Weekday counts

Day	Movements
Saturday	4,859
Friday	3,182
Thursday	3,041
Tuesday	3,032
Monday	2,325

Registration proxy

Bucket	Share
Indian-registered	72.9%
Foreign-registered	24.8%
Unknown	2.2%

Saturday leads the sample. Monday is the quietest weekday.

Registration is a proxy, not a route label, but it still makes the traffic mix easy to read.

Takeaway

What the data says

Banked traffic: morning and evening waves, not a flat day.

Corridor shape: landings and takeoffs reuse the same physical paths.

Fast reset: the airport turns from landing to takeoff in about 1.5 minutes.

This is still ADS-B data, so it should be read as a proxy, not as an official airport operations log. But it is a strong proxy. The key point is simple: Mumbai Airport is not just busy. It is compressed into a very clear operational pattern.

If you want the archived 5-minute snapshot instead, it stays separate here.

Appendix

Extra signals that did not fit the main story

Repeat aircraft

Registration	Pairs
VT-YAM	39
VT-TNV	37
VT-YAC	34
VT-ILQ	32
VT-IMX	32

Same-aircraft rhythm

Metric	Value
Leader	VT-YAM
Pairs	39
Active days	19
Median gap	92.6 min
P90 gap	224.9 min

Data quality

Field	Missing
Callsign	726,596 (4.0%)
Registration	425,200 (2.4%)
Aircraft type	427,412 (2.4%)

Same aircraft landing and takeoff reappearance chart — The same aircraft does not just repeat by registration; it comes back with a measurable landing-to-takeoff rhythm.

Missing-field data quality summary — The raw archive is incomplete in a few fields, but the missing share is small enough that the movement pattern still holds.