Double blow for IGI: Fog, R-Day curbs

New Delhi: While the rest of the city celebrated India's 60th Republic Day, passengers at the IGI Airport bore the brunt of an unexpected fog. As visibility dipped suddenly in the morning hours, atleast six flights were cancelled while several were delayed. An hour-long closure of air space due to the flypast only compounded the problem, even though several airlines had rescheduled their flights much earlier.
Low visibility procedures (LVP) were out in place at 3.35 am, when visibility had fallen to 150 m and were lifted only at 9.05 am when it had improved to 700 m. Atleast one flight was diverted during the 5.5 hours of LVP while 70 flights operated. There were only three CAT III-B operations even as the runway visual range was well below 350 m CAT III-B operations take place when RVR is between 350 m and 50 m for about two hours.
The Met department said that while the visibility had been low since late on Sunday night, having reached 350 m by 1.30 am and improving from 100 m to 700 m in a span of one hour at 9.30 am, the RVR on the main runway was comfortable for a large part of the morning. At 4.30 am, the RVR on the main runway was 1,400 m but within an hour, it had dropped to 250 m. It went down further to a 100 m and improved to 600 m by 7.30 am. However, the new runway continued to grapple with the problem of low visibility for much longer, necessitating the use of only the main runway from 3.35 am to 7.15 am. Here, the RVR dropped to 300 m at 4.30 am and improved almost suddenly from 200 m to 1,400 between 8.30 am and 9.30 am.
27/01/09 Times of india

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Categories: Airports Jan 2009