Dense fog at airport holds up flights

Kolkata: Nearly 800 passengers of 25 flights scheduled to take off from NSCBI Airport on Monday morning got stranded for hours as dense fog reduced runway visibility to below 350 metre. Twenty-two incoming flights were delayed, too.
Flights bound for Port Blair, Raipur, Delhi, Mumbai, Guwahati, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Indore were the worst affected. The Kolkata-Dhaka Jet Airways flight was the lone outgoing international flight that got delayed.
The problem started at daybreak with visibility dropping sharply around 6 am. The dense fog compelled authorities to suspend flight operations till 7.40 am, when visibility began to improve. But normal operations could resume only from 8.15 am.
Jet Airways' Port Blair flight was the first to take off at 7.50 am, an hour and 15 minutes behind schedule. It was followed by an Air India flight to Delhi, which took off at 8 am. Low-cost carriers like Deccan, SpiceJet and IndiGo had to wait longer in the queue for take off. The airport was congested with outgoing and incoming flights held up, said an ATC source.
29/01/08 Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jan 2008