Saturday, December 07, 2019

Fog disrupts Srinagar air traffic, 11 flights cancelled

Poor runway visibility led to cancellation of 11 afternoon flights at Srinagar Airport on Friday.

“All flights’ scheduled after 2:45 PM could not operate due to a dense layer of fog, which prevented aircrafts from either landing or taking-off,” Director, Airport’s Authority of India, Srinagar, Santosh Dhoke told Greater Kashmir.
Dhoke said that of 25 flights, only 14 could operate on Friday. “Flight operations were normal in the morning but runway visibility dropped to below 600 meters in the afternoon. This is much lower than standard visibility required for flight operations. It disrupted air traffic till end of the day,” said Dhoke.

He said normal flight operations were expected on Saturday as weatherman has predicted improvement in visibility. “Weather forecast for tomorrow is encouraging. We hope all flights operate smoothly,” Dhoke said.

It may be recalled that more than 60 flights were cancelled at Srinagar Airport last month due to poor visibility. Of these, 50 flights were cancelled on two consecutive days of 7 and 8 November due to Kashmir receiving heavy snowfall.
An official said, “Flight operations are disrupted every winter with visibility often dropping below 500 meters in December and January. In January this year, 98 flights were cancelled at Srinagar airport due to inclement weather.”

The Srinagar airport is under direct operational control of the Indian Air Force (IAF), which controls its air traffic and landing strip and also the facilities fire-fighting and crash activities, apart from the airspace. The terminal building, where the passengers check-in and check-out, and the apron area, where an aircraft is parked, are controlled by the AAI.
07/12/19 Saqib Malik/Greater Kashmir
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