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New Delhi: A thick blanket of fog in Delhi since the early hours of Sunday led to the diversion of about 10 flights to Jaipur; also, more than 300 flights were delayed at the Delhi airport, the busiest and largest airport in India.
“Around 10 flights, which were expected to land at Delhi airport, have been diverted to Jaipur so far as the captains of those flights were not CAT-III compliant. Over 300 flights have been delayed and the impact will only recede gradually,” an official told Mint.
Officials aware of the development said that there was no visibility between 4 am and 10 am, as a result of which flights were unable to depart at all during this period and only 15 flight arrivals were recorded. Under normal circumstances, the airport records around 60 flights, including arrivals and departures per hour.
The airport currently handles 1,400-1,500 daily flights on average.
The difficult weather conditions early morning with visibility of around 80 metres delayed departures of flights. Further, this led to long waiting period for parking for the CAT-III compliant flights which landed at the Delhi airport and some arriving flights had to wait about two-three hours to reach the parking bay.
Thousands of passengers took to social media to complain about the chaotic scenes at the check-in counters, security lanes, and lack of refreshments for passengers whose flights were delayed. Flight departures continued to be delayed by an average of 2.5 hours at Delhi airport with some flights delayed by over eight-nine hours.
“…5 hours delays and still counting! Refreshment to only who ask for it!! No one to manage the chaos!!,” a user on social media platform X wrote.
Another user Priyash Bhargava complained that Air India Express IX775 Guwahati to Delhi flight took off from Guwahati around 1:30 am on Sunday for Delhi but got diverted to Jaipur due to bad weather. The user further complained about the passengers stuck in the aircraft which was parked idle at the Jaipur airport for over 12 hours.
Dense fog also affected other cities such as Varanasi and Chennai. Akasa Air had to cancel four flights from the city QP 1698 Bengaluru-Varanasi, QP 1497 Varanasi-Mumbai, QP 1491 Mumbai-Varanasi, and QP 1424 Varanasi-Bengaluru. Similarly, IndiGo diverted its Singapore-Chennai flight to Hyderabad due to the adverse weather conditions. SpiceJet also cautioned about impact on flights at Delhi, Amritsar, Darbhanga, Guwahati, Bagdogra, Varanasi, Jammu, Patna, Tezpur and Gorakhpur.
As an aircraft is expected to complete four flights a day, a delay at any point of departure causes a domino effect for the rest of the flight schedule and crew availability over the following day as well even if the weather conditions improve.
“Plane is standing on the tarmac, passengers are waiting AI 394 for Singapore scheduled to take off at 1:25 pm is delayed by five hours. Reason: Pilot has not yet arrived!!,” another user wrote on X.
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Published: 14 Jan 2024, 11:22 PM IST
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