When IGI played host to diverted flights

New Delhi: The New Year has ushered in a completely new phenomenon for the IGI airport. Instead of Delhibound flights getting diverted to nearby places like Jaipur , Lucknow and Amritsar due to fog, the first two weeks of this year have seen more flights headed for these cities getting diverted to Delhi due to fog at the original destinations .
According to Airports Authority of India (AAI), while 27 flights were diverted to Delhi from nearby places so far in January, only 10 IGI bound flights were sent elsewhere in the same period.
The puzzling pace of change can be gauged from the fact that foggy season this winter was from November 26 to December 26. This period saw no diversion to Delhi. Meanwhile, 22 international and 59 domestic bound for Delhi were diverted to nearby places, says AAI data. Most of the aircraft were non-CAT III compliant and could not land at IGI.
Also, in another first the ATC is handling record flights in Delhi this winter. "The hourly runway capacity this winter has touched a high of almost 60 flights while every winter this figure used to go southwards. The daily flight movement at Delhi has also gone to a record 900 in winter. Usually, we saw a drop in traffic due to weather-related problems. The ATC (that's under AAI) is going to increase hourly capacity substantially in coming days as the daily traffic is expected to cross the 1,000-mark very soon," said AAI chairman V P Agarwal.
14/01/11 Saurabh Sinha & Neha Lalchandani/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jan 2011