Fog hit 400 flights at IGI airport on Thursday, affected operations for 2 hours

In total, at least 400 flights — both departing and arriving — were affected by the morning fog, with delays continuing till late in the evening.

A thick blanket of fog engulfed Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport on Thursday morning, delaying ot just the common flyers, but also Prime Minister Narendra Modi and national general secretary of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Ram Madhav.

Officials said six flights had to be cancelled while 10 incoming flights were diverted to nearby airports of Lucknow and Jaipur due to low visibility at Delhi airport. (HT File / Representative Photo)

Officials said six flights had to be cancelled while 10 incoming flights were diverted to nearby airports of Lucknow and Jaipur due to low visibility at Delhi airport. In total, at least 400 flights — both departing and arriving — were affected by the morning fog, with delays continuing till late in the evening.

The meteorological department said that this is the first dense fog of the year that crippled IGI airport.

According to DIAL — Delhi International Airport Ltd — low visibility procedures (LVP) were implemented at the airport late night on Wednesday and continued till Thursday afternoon. LVP are a set of instructions put in place for a safe and efficient operation of aircrafts and vehicles during poor visibility at an airport.

DIAL said that the visibility at Delhi airport dropped to less than 50m between 7:45am and 9:15am on Thursday. The Runway Visual Range (RVR) readings remained between 75m and 125m during the same period.

“The reduced visibility led to cancellations of six domestic flights, four of which were departing. Around 10 flights had to be diverted. Most of these diversions were because of pilot non-compliance — pilots not being trained to fly in low visibility. The departures had to be put on hold around 7.30am for two hours,” a DIAL spokesperson said.

Prime Minister Modi’s flight to Jalandhar was one of those that was delayed at the airport. “I wanted to be here on time but because of the fog I got delayed,” the PM said during his speech at the Indian Science Congress in Jalandhar.

BJP’s Ram Madhav also was stuck at the airport and he had to sit inside a plane for about three hours. “CAT3 etc notwithstanding, stuck in d aircraft for last 3 Hrs at Delhi airport with absolutely no info. ATC too unable to tell when d flight wl get clearance. Fog in Delhi can cripple air movement at 12 noon. No technology can conquer nature (sic),” Madhav tweeted.

Most of the departures from IGI were delayed till late Thursday evening to clear the backlog caused by the earlier shutdown. The airport operator did not give an exact number of arrivals and departures which were delayed due to the fog. However, an officer said in all about 400 flights were affected.

The delays left hundreds of flyers stranded with social media websites being swarmed by passengers struggling to get real-time flight updates.

Mariette Valsan, a model and an actor, who got stuck inside an aircraft, tweeted to the Delhi airport saying that she had been waiting at the airport for more than an hour.

In a reply to her tweet, the Delhi airport tweeted, “Due to bad weather, flight operations at #DelhiAirport were affected. Passengers are requested to contact the airline concerned for updated flight information. Any inconvenience to our flyers are deeply regretted. (sic).”

Valsan told HT, “My only complaint was that they boarded us and then made us wait in the aircraft for two hours. The staff was calm and helpful, but understandably, people were losing their cool. Confined spaces for tired people is never a good thing.”

Airlines took to Twitter to convey delays and updates.

Meanwhile, officials said that several trains were also running late because of the fog.

“We are expecting moderate to dense fog on Friday too. The intensity of the fog is however expected to be less than Thursday,” said BP Yadav, deputy director general of IMD.

In December 2018, the IGI airport had encountered the lowest number of fog hours in 22 years. There were only 145 hours of fog compared to an average of around 300 hours of fog in December. There were only nine hours of dense fog (visibility less than 200m) spread over two nights. Usually the airport encounters around 45 hours of dense fog spread over nine days. The maximum fog was recorded in December 1998 when there were around 419 hours of fog.