DGCA on Wednesday said that it would pull up airlines for causing congestion at the Mumbai airport during the evening peak hours between 9.15 pm and 11.15 pm as per a report in HT by Soubhik Mitra. Hundreds of air passengers taking evening flights to Mumbai are facing delays because a significant number of flights are left circling above the airport as they are reaching the city before their scheduled time of arrival. 

"We have warned airlines to stop this menace via email. We will address the issue in detail during the winter schedule slot distribution meeting," said Lalit Gupta, deputy director general with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

The DGCA will meet airlines next week for the distribution of take-off and landing slots for the winter schedule (October 2011 to March 2012). This is the second time this year that airlines have been found violating the regulator's flight schedule. In April, the DGCA had caught 70 city-bound flights that were taking-off early from their respective airports of origin and as a result reaching Mumbai before time.

More than half of these flights revised their departure timings following the DGCA crackdown but the problem has recurred again since last week.