Fog, 'ILS failure' hit Nagpur air traffic

Nagpur: Air passengers were put to inconvenience as flights scheduled to arrive at Nagpur on Tuesday morning were either diverted to Hyderabad or cancelled due to fog and poor visibility, according to official accounts. However, airport sources said there had also been a failure of Instrument Landing System (ILS) that led to the disruptions.
Among those forced to make alternate plans was Bharatiya Janata Party national president Nitin Gadkari, who was to travel to Indore for the party’s national executive meet. Though airport officials claimed that flights were diverted owing to poor visibility due to fog that had developed following heavy rains on Monday night, sources at the airport attributed the reason to the failure of the Instrument Landing System (ILS) which went out of order on Tuesday morning. Air India’s flights from Mumbai and Delhi, JetLite from Mumbai and Kingfisher’s Hyderabad-Nagpur-Indore flight were among those affected. Gadkari later flew to Indore in a special chartered flight of the Madhya Pradesh government.
The worst hit was Air India’s IC-129 flight from Mumbai which had 144 passengers on board. Though it departed at its scheduled time from Mumbai, the plane hovered over Nagpur airport for almost 25 minutes as it did not get landing permission due to poor visibility. The pilot was then asked to take the flight to Hyderabad, where it landed at 11am.
17/02/10 Sachin Dravekar/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Feb 2010