Heavy rains force 4 flights to go-around, one diversion at Delhi airport

A cloudburst followed by heavy rains hit air traffic movement at the Delhi airport this afternoon with at least one flight diverted and four others asked to make a 'go-around'.

The MeT office said it was one of the heaviest and "unprecedented" downpour of this season, with 117 mm recorded within an hour which could completely submerge any low-lying airport like Mumbai.

Water-logging on the arrival side of the IGI Airport inconvenienced passengers which led the airport operator to arrange the delivery of their baggages on the conveyor belts at the international side as a precautionary measure, a DIAL spokesperson said.

A Jet Airways flight, 9W-2632, was made to 'go-around' at 1449 hours. But as it was still unable to land due to the heavy downpour, it was finally diverted to Jaipur at 1515 hours, the spokesperson said.

Four flights of IndiGo, JetLite, Kingfisher and Air India, which were scheduled to land between 1415 and 1515 hours, were made to do a 'go around' due to the heavy rains.

The rains led to clogging and overflowing of the drains adjoining the arrival forecourt of Terminal 3, with the excess water spilling into the domestic arrival area. DIAL's engineering team was deployed in the affected areas to restore normal operations.

After the heavy rains, the operations on the airside were normal, the spokesperson said, adding that the runways were fully operational and all flights were landing and taking off normally.