Thousands of air and train passengers had a harrowing time on Tuesday morning as Delhi was engulfed in dense fog.
Nearly 250 flights, including arrivals and departures, were delayed by several hours as Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) witnessed zero visibility conditions in the early hours.
Two arrival flights, one each of Air India and SpiceJet, had to be diverted to nearby airports as they couldn’t land in Delhi.
Train schedules, already reeling under a huge backlog of delays from December, went further off track with 85 Delhi-bound trains running late by several hours and 47 trains rescheduled.
Low visibility
Visibility at the airport plummeted to below 50 metres from 2.30 a.m. on Tuesday and started improving slowly only after 9 a.m., low visibility conditions subsided only after 11.30 am.
The MeT department said that Tuesday saw this season’s third worst dense fog spell after December 2 and December 14, with CAT III A/B visibility conditions prevailing.
Passengers had a tough time as they spent hours waiting inside aircraft for the fog cover to lift.
“Our Delhi-Agartala IndiGo flight (6E 861) was scheduled to take off at 6.10 a.m. but got delayed due to fog. We were stranded at the airport and then had to suffer sitting inside the aircraft, waiting for the fog to lift, for more than four hours,” said Dolonchapa Bhattacharya, a Delhi resident.
Packed Terminal 1-D
The domestic departure Terminal 1-D was bursting at the seams as flight after flight got delayed and the terminal got crowded with passengers. Due to inadequate sitting arrangements at the terminal, many passengers were forced to sit on the floors.
“The Delhi Airport was like a mismanaged fish market today,” Indrani Ray, a passenger tweeted.
The MeT department said that this season, particularly December 2016, has witnessed one of longest dense fog spells in the last many years. “The normal for dense fog occurrences at IGIA, for visibility below 200 metres, is six days and 34 hours in the month using period data of 1981-2014, but in December 2016, it was observed for 13 days and 62 hours in total,” said R. K. Jenamani, Director-in-Charge of IGIA MeT unit.
“As per data for 1996-2016, December 2016 had one of the top five highest dense fog occurrences for the month in the last 16 years,” he said.
Forecast
The minimum temperature on Tuesday was recorded at 9.5 degree Celsius, two notches above normal, while the maximum temperature was recorded at 24 degree Celsius, four degrees above normal.
The MeT office has predicted mainly clear skies for Wednesday with the likelihood of moderate to dense fog in the morning. “The maximum and minimum temperatures are expected to hover at 25 and 10 degrees Celsius, respectively,” the weatherman said.