More than 100 trains set to arrive in the Capital on Thursday were delayed due to dense fog in large parts of north India, even as flight operations at the Delhi airport remained largely unaffected despite poor visiblity.
11 trains cancelled
By 6 pm on Thursday, 100 trains had or were arriving late in Delhi while 48 trains had to be rescheduled and 11 cancelled. Trains arriving late also meant that these were not available for the return leg, delaying departures by many hours as well.
While most trains were delayed by over two hours, some that were very late included the Sitamarhi-Anand Vihar Lichchavi Express (31 hours), Howrah-New Delhi Poorva Express (27 hours), Barauni-New Delhi Vaishali Express (26 hours), Manduadih (Varanasi)-New Delhi Shivganga Express (24 hours) and Bhagalpur-Anand Vihar Garib Rath (23 hours).
Arrangements made
The Northern Railways said that adequate arrangements had been made for passenger facilities at all major railway stations in Delhi, along with adequate deployment of railway and security officials.
Though the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) in Delhi saw a dip in visibility on Friday morning, the runway visual range (RVR) – the height at which the runway is visible to a pilot – was good enough for flights to operate.
IGIA not hit
“The Delhi fog on nights of December 7,8 was patchy type and at IGIA, the runway 28 didn’t have dense fog. However, runway 29-11, the rural side of IGIA has some CAT-IIIA dense fog which was just for few hours during 1.30am and 3 am on Friday,” said RK Jenamani, Director-in-Charge, IGIA MeT unit. “Hence, IGIA has almost normal operation,” he said.