Zero visibility hits flights

Visibility at Calcutta airport dropped to zero owing to heavy fog cover early on Wednesday, grounding flights for over four hours.
“The general visibility dropped to 0 metre at 5am, the first time this has happened in recent memory,” said an airport official.
Flight operations were stalled with no flights taking off or landing between 5am and 9am.
A British Airways flight was cancelled and rescheduled from 5.05am on Wednesday to 1am on Thursday. Its 271 passengers waited on board till 8am on Wednesday, when the flight was cancelled.
About 25 other flights, both domestic and international, were delayed by two to three hours. The Jeddah-Calcutta Air India Haj special was diverted to Nagpur. The flight, which was scheduled to land at Calcutta airport at 5am, finally landed around 11.30am.
“We started experiencing low-visibility problems because of the dense fog around 2am. The situation deteriorated steadily till visibility was zero around 5am,” an airport official said. “Visibility improved to 200 metres at 7am but dropped to 50 metres at 7.30am. At 8am, it was 100 metres.”
Officials said 27 domestic and international flights could not take off and 15 flights failed to land, till conditions improved around 9am.
The airport’s Category II instrument landing system (ILS) with it’s sophisticated runway visual range software was rendered redundant on Wednesday morning.
08/01/09 The Telegraph

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Categories: Airports Jan 2009, New Jan 2009