Blinding fog at IGI delays 150 flights

New Delhi: Another spell of dense fog threw traffic completely out of gear at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport on Wednesday with seven flights diverted, 10 cancelled and about 150 delayed. Closure of the airspace for about half-an-hour due to R-Day rehearsals aggravated the problem.
Visibility dipped to 300 m by 10.30 pm on Tuesday. From then on, it kept on falling till it went below 50 m by 1.30 am. ‘‘Just after midnight, dense fog conditions set in at the airport with general visibility first falling to 100m and then even lower. By 1.30 am, the runway visual range (RVR) at the new runway had already dropped to a low of 75 m while the main runway managed to hold out for another hour. However, the fog cover thickened so suddenly that the runway visual range, that was earlier about 1,000m on the main runway at 1.30 am, went down to 50 m by 2.30 am. The situation remained like this till about 9 am,’’ said officials.
Passengers stuck at the airport in the extremely low visibility had a tough time, specially when their flights got cancelled and they were unable to get tickets for later flights. Many airlines had passengers board the aircraft and wait for two to four hours till visibility improved and they were able to take off.
Passengers of an Emirates flight to Dubai were reportedly made to spend four hours each in the aircraft on two occasions before they were transferred to a hotel.
21/01/10 Economic Times

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Categories: Airports Jan 2010