Fog delays over 50 flights

A thick blanket of fog engulfed Indira Gandhi International Airport disrupting flight operations in the wee hours of Saturday.

A thick blanket of fog engulfed Indira Gandhi International Airport disrupting flight operations in the wee hours of Saturday. Over 50 domestic and international flights were delayed, some of them by three hours, while over 20 flights had to be rescheduled during the early morning hours, senior airport officials said.

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"Flight disruption caused some confusion at the domestic terminal and due to rush passengers were finding it hard to get a place to sit," said Jyoti Kaul, a passenger

Though no flight was cancelled, a Jet airways domestic flight from Ahmedabad had to be diverted to Jaipur due to low visibility at the airport, an airport official said. The runway visibility range (RVR) dropped to almost 50 metres, forcing 19 flights to operate in CAT IIIB condition.

Though the RVR remained 50 metres at the new runway for almost two hours, officials said it did not have much impact on flight operations. Visibility started improving around 8 a.m. and low visibility procedure (LVP) was called off at 8.55 a.m. bringing normalcy in flight operations.

According to officials, LVP was enforced at the airport at 5.15 a.m. and remained in operation for three hours and 40 minutes.

"We used the runway 28 for departures and runway 29 for arrivals during this period. Over 70 flights operated during the LVP including 16 international flights," said an airport official.

According to the IGIA Met department officials, this year’s fog (2008-09) has been the worst and the longest in the past few years causing delay to over 1,200 flights and resulting in cancellation of 120 flights.