Haze leaves flights in a daze

A blanket of fog enveloped Calcutta from Sunday night, giving the winter-starved city a feel of the season but playing havoc with travel schedules.
More than 25 flights out of the city were delayed by two hours on an average as the airport remained swathed in fog from around 11pm on Sunday till late on Monday morning. A Kingfisher flight from Mumbai landed without trouble around 11.30pm but had to be towed away to the parking bay from the primary runway because the pilots couldn’t see beyond 50 metres.
Only one flight was cancelled — the Jet Airways morning service to Port Blair — but there wasn’t a passenger who wasn’t affected by the fog. Trains to and from Howrah and Sealdah stations were delayed, too.
The Met office said winter hadn’t set in yet but forecast a drop in temperature over the next few days.
As visibility dropped rapidly on Sunday night, even the CAT II instrument landing system installed last year couldn’t ensure normal runway operations.
“The CAT-II instrument landing system enables aircraft to land with a minimum visibility of 350 metres. Visibility was less than 50 metres after midnight,” an airport official said.
International flights scheduled to take off early on Monday were hit the hardest. Lufthansa’s Calcutta-Frankfurt and the Thai Airways Calcutta-Bangkok flights were grounded through the night. The Lufthansa aircraft took off at 5.48am and the Thai Airways plane at 6.52am.
Singapore Airlines had anticipated the problem and advanced its Singapore flight from 11.45pm to 10.30pm from December 1. Thai Airways also advanced the departure of its Bangkok flight from 1.55am to 10.30pm.
Flights on the domestic sector were stalled till 8am. IndiGo’s flight to Mumbai took off at 8am, two hours behind schedule. Air India’s flight to Silchar took off at 8.10am instead of 5.40am. The airline’s Delhi flight rolled out of the parking bay at 8.30am, one-and-a-half hours behind schedule, but could not take off until 8.50am because of congestion on the runway.
16/12/08 The Telegraph

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Categories: Airports Dec 2008