The Hindu : Front Page : Fog holds up thousands at Delhi airport

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Wednesday, Jan 14, 2009
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Fog holds up thousands at Delhi airport

Staff Reporter

PHOTO: V. V. KRISHNAN

FOGGED OUT: The scene at Delhi airport on Tuesday morning. –

NEW DELHI: After a few days’ break, dense fog once again engulfed Indira Gandhi International Airport here on Tuesday morning, badly affecting flight schedules throughout the day.

200 flights delayed

Thousands of passengers were held up as over 200 flights were delayed by 30 minutes to four hours, 31 flights were rescheduled and more than 40 cancelled because of poor weather conditions at the airport.

All flight operations at the airport were suspended from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. when general visibility dropped to almost zero while the runway visual range (RVR) plummeted to 50 metres and below. As a result, over 25 flights coming to Delhi had to be diverted to other cities like Lucknow, Jaipur, Nagpur and Ahmedabad.

The Departure Terminal was packed with passengers till around 11 a.m. since no flights took off for close to two hours in the morning. The backlog of flights continued till late in the evening.

“My flight to Ranchi was scheduled to take off at 8-50 a.m., but thanks to the fog it has been delayed by over four hours,” said Animesh Singh waiting to board his flight in the afternoon.

As the outgoing flights started late for their destinations, they were also running behind schedule when it was time for these aircraft to return to Delhi.

“Visibility fell at the airport on Tuesday morning. Safeguard procedures were initiated at 3 a.m. while the low visibility procedures were implemented around 5-30 a.m. and continued till 11-45 a.m. Both the main and the new runway were being used during the Low Visibility Procedure. The LVP lasted about six hours, during which 74 flights operated at IGI Airport,” airport sources said.

Once visibility improved, several flights began to land one after the other, creating some chaos at the Arrivals Terminal.

Trains also affected

The fog also impacted the movement of trains. As many as 25 of them were delayed and seven rescheduled on Tuesday because of fog as well as the derailment of a goods train in Bhopal a couple of days ago.

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