low visibility delays flights, trains
The first day of dense fog in the Capital wrecked flight and train schedules on Monday morning, giving a taste of what is to come in the next few weeks.
Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) witnessed chaotic scenes as schedules of over 200 domestic and international flights were severely affected due to runway visibility range (RVR) dipping below 50 metres.
Nine flights had to be diverted to Jaipur, Ahmedabad and lucknow and eight flights were cancelled. Air travellers had a bad time as not only did they have to suffer delays but many of them were stuck inside the planes for several hours.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who was reportedly flying to Chennai, was among the hapless travellers stuck at the airport. Due to the thick blanket of fog, train schedules were also thrown out of gear. “Over two dozen trains were delayed and out of these 16 trains
were rescheduled. These included, Hazrat Nizamuddin-Secunderabad Duronto Express, New Delhi-Sealdah Rajdhani Express, New Delhi Bhubaneswar Rajdhani Express and New Delhi-Kanpur Central Shatabdi Express,” said AS Negi, spokesperson for Northern Railways. Meanwhile, visibility remained extremely low on the Capital’s roads also, spelling trouble for motorists.
At the airport also, no flight operations could take place for several hours. Poor visibility prevailed between 7 am and 9.30 am and no flights could either take-off or land. As soon as visibility increased above 50 metres after 9.20 am, flights scheduled to land at Delhi airport were asked to land on the main runway (28/11), using CAT-III B instrument landing system (IlS), as the visibility on the third runway was still poor.
“But the flights still could not take off as the minimum visibility required for take-offs is between 125 metres and 150 metres, depending upon the size of the aircraft,” said an airport official adding that for most part of the morning, runway 29/11, remained closed.
As a result of the delays, airport officials faced huge backlog of flights. To ease the situation, the airlines resorted to confining passengers inside aircrafts, flouting guidelines issued by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Yogesh Huja, a flier tweeted that he was confined inside the aircraft for 90 minutes, as the airline waited for visibility to improve.
“Fog started to envelop the airport soon after midnight but it thickened around 6.30 am. The general visibility was almost zero while the runway visibility dipped below 50 metres,” an official said. The early morning flights were asked to go-around before being diverted to the nearby States.
“Six flights were diverted to Jaipur, two to Ahmedabad and one to lucknow. Before being diverted the air traffic control asked them to hover over Delhi for a while but as the planes were running out of fuel, they were asked to go to these airports,” added the official. Air passengers had a nightmarish experience as not only were their flights delayed or cancelled but there was little information available at the airport about when operations would resume.