NRI passengers look for way out of the fog

The tourism promotion slogan 'Incredible India' can take a whole new meaning when NRIs land at Delhi or Mumbai this winter. Between Dec 10 and around Jan 15 each year, flights are badly affected by the dense fog in Delhi . As most flights from Europe and the US carrying full loads of NRIs and tourists arrive in the early morning when the fog is very dense they are sometimes diverted to other airports - as far away as Mumbai.
NRIs fume at the delays in landing and ask, "How come airports such as O'Hare in Chicago and Heathrow in London with heavy fog do not have this problem?" They use CAT-III landing systems. The Delhi fog should not create these problems since the airport is also fitted with CAT-III landing system but Indian airlines do not want to spend millions of dollars to train their pilots for this system when the fog menace lasts for two or three weeks in a year. But the NRI - and tourist - traffic is the highest during this holiday period.
More airlines and more flights have added to the woes.
11/12/07 Kul Bhushan/KalingaTimes

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Categories: Airports Dec 2007