Flight schedules go haywire at IGI

New Delhi: While the rest of the city enjoyed the rain and thunderstorm that hit Delhi on Monday evening, the IGI Airport was thrown out of gear as several flights got delayed by as much as three hours due to the weather conditions. Only one runway was in use from 5pm which further compounded the problem.
The weather also played havoc with the election campaigns as several politicians were forced to change their travel plans. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Gujarat CM Narendra Modi were among those who could not attend their rallies. While the former could not take off from the Safdarjung Airport due to the inclement weather, the latter was denied landing permission at the IGI Airport. Cricketer Kapil Dev was also forced to miss a public meeting in Chhattarpur as his chopper was not given permission to take off from Chandigarh.
Sources said the wind direction had been changing frequently all day because of which the air traffic control was facing severe problems. Just before 5pm, the weather situation worsened and thunder and lightening activity forced flights to change their routes to avoid hitting such pockets. "The wind speed was not very high, but the wind direction fluctuated frequently. Several pockets of lightening and thunder clouds had developed and pilots chose to keep away from these. Such pockets can prove to be very dangerous at cruising levels,'' said Dr R K Jenamani, director-incharge, IGI Airport.
From 5pm, only the main runway was in use for both landing and take-off. Sources said that due to such weather pattern, flights that took off from the main runway had to turn towards runway 11 the Dwarka side of the new runway because of which no operations could take place on the new runway.
05/05/09 Times of India

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Categories: Airports May 2009