After Delhi sees fog, 13 flights diverted to Amritsar

Following dense fog at Delhi, around 15 flights coming to the capital were diverted to Amritsar.People could be seen moving from one counter to another in search of information or tickets.Dense fog started to descend at the Delhi airport around 7pm last evening. Within two hours, the runway visibility dropped from 500 metres to less than 100 metres.

The local Sree Guru Ram Das Jee International Airport witnessed a jampacked situation when 13 flights that were supposed to land in Delhi on Sunday night were diverted to Amritsar as the capital was engulfed by dense fog.

HT Image

The flights of various airlines that were heading to Delhi had no choice but to land at Amritsar due to the fog. Not only the Amritsar airport was almost jampacked due to back to back landings but also about 2000 passengers had to spend a night at the airport.

Although some airlines had shifted the passengers to hotels but many passengers had to spend night at the airport terminal.

As per the airport authorities, the flights that were diverted to Amritsar had started returning back after 10: 00 am.

Talking to HT, an airport official said, “At this airport we have 14 bays and on Sunday night all the bays had an aircraft standing due to diversion. Due arrangements were made that are required at our level. Amritsar airport also has a CAT II advanced landing system that helped all aircrafts from Delhi land here despite some foggy conditions.”

Detailing further, the Airport official said, “Out of the total 13 flights diverted to Amritsar, five were of Air India, four each of Jet Airways and Spice Jet.”

Since, visibility at Amritsar was good on Monday morning, all the operations were normal from this Airport.

It is learnt that Delhi had witnessed one of the densest fogs in past few years, putting the aircraft operations in disarray.

In the past, even Amritsar Airport has not seen such heavy amount of flights being diverted.

On Monday morning, various passengers were seen waiting for things to clear up in Delhi and were seated in the terminal building of the local airport.