Landing earlier this morning on Mumbai's RWY 14 (notorious for its displaced threshold, reduced LDA and many upslopes and downslopes along it's length!) in heavy rain, she skid, slipped and danced her merry way to a stop at the far end... and the nose wheel apparently over-ran the concrete by a few feet. Aircraft is in perfect shape from what I hear. That's the news out as of now.
But whatever the outcome, knowing that runway very well, I say congratulations to the Captain for a great job done under very obvious trying conditions. I'm sure many pilots flying in and out of Mumbai have nightmares of landing on 14 with winds always either cross and >15kt or tail and ~10kt after a bumpy approach. Add heavy rain to it, reduced visibility, that nasty "bump" and the TDZ plus the always unspoken-of Rubber Deposits at the TDZs and you have the perfect recipe for what happened today.
Why can't Mumbai's runways be better maintained (or simply rebuilt elsewhere!)? On a few odd days, it's a disaster just waiting to happen.
Personally I would have gone around or diverted knowing Rwy14 and the conditions, but I wouldn't take anything away from the AI captain as one is always trying to make it in somehow, especially at your home base airport with... the main runway 09/27 closed... AND many passengers stranded for days together after the devastation of the floods... AND 14 being the ONLY runway out of FOUR that is open and available for landing (the rest of the airport being still fairly water-logged or very wet and the ILS-es of the other runways still not up and running).
But that's best left for another discussion to decide what was right or wrong.
As per TV reports, SQ had earlier decided not to operate to Mumbai since they cannot land there. Guess 14/32 isn't very popular among most of the foreign carriers... understandably too.
Yes, 940mm in 24 hours that day. 630mm of that fell in just 12 hours. It WAS hell on earth. I know... I slept the night on a cold, hard marble staircase on the 3rd floor of an office building I "found" while escaping the 5-foot floods
Was in pitch darkness with the electricity switched off all over the city. Later in the morning I found "my staircase" overlooked the threshold of Rwy 14
....and then walked 10km home amidst the devastation.
Hope Mumbai recovers fast. Loads of garbage remains to be collected from the roads, carcasses of dead animals too, horrible stench in some areas. Watch out for diseases Mumbai, and good luck with the repair!