Fog swamps IGI for 6 hours

New Delhi: The season's thickest fog hit Delhi late on Sunday night, throwing air schedules haywire and once again exposing the aviation ministry's hollow claims of being prepared for the yearly mess. The Delhi airport was virtually closed from 5.30am to 11am as visibility was hovering below 100 metres.
This had a cascading effect all day long — and possibly will extend on Tuesday too — with 19 flights being cancelled and almost all 650-odd flights that operate from IGI daily being delayed by anywhere from one to eight hours.
Train schedules were hit badly too with around 96 trains running late while 13 were either cancelled partially or entirely. While 11 trains left late from New Delhi railway station, six Rajdhanis were running late by 4-5 hours.
The worst part, however, is yet to come. The Met department has predicted a similar fog situation for Tuesday. With fog setting in by 8pm on Monday, there was a possibility that flights that had left the city during the day might not be able to return due to low visibility problems.
Secondly, with almost 80-90% of the pilots who flew on Monday having spent most of their working hours sitting in the cockpit, waiting for clearance to take-off, they exhausted their flight duty limitations. On Tuesday, therefore, airlines were worried about the non-availability of pilots, especially the CAT III trained ones.
Meanwhile, from 5.30am to 11am on Monday, only eight flights — six international and two domestic — could land using the highly sophisticated CAT III B system that allows planes to land when visibility is between 75 and 100 metres.
Low visibility procedures were in place for 11 hours and 35 minutes — from 1.10am to 12.45pm, making it the longest-ever single stretch of dense fog in the past two years. While visibility started improving after 11am, the huge backlog with a majority of flights not being CAT III B compliant meant a massive problem for passengers.
30/12/08 Times of India

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Categories: Airports Dec 2008