A clear view in fog

You know the real problem with the Bengaluru International Airport being located 35 km outside the city? The dense winter fog results in delayed flights. This happened at HAL airport, but was never was quite as bad.

Take last Tuesday morning. Passengers who arrived early to board flights around 6 am where checked in, frisked, security-stamped and sent down the lines past entry gates into the waiting aircrafts, despite a clearly visible blanket of fog on the runaway. The fog at BIAL is special. It is called ‘radiation fog’, something that is formed when the ground cools rapidly resulting in condensation. It takes a light wind, a clear sky and humidity to make this happen. Devanahalli is idea for these conditions. BIAL knows this and it warns passengers that “Fog is anticipated from 15 November to 15 February, between 03:00 IST to 08:30 IST.”

What BIAL does not tell you is this: you are going to be herded into the aircraft regardless of the fact that the aircraft is not going to take off because of the fog. You may have to sit for hours, folded like an origami passenger in the narrow seats of low cost airlines, perhaps ready to be struck by deep vein thrombosis, until the fog lifts.

BIAL knows that the flights cannot take off and yet you get sent into the aircraft. This is because BIAL does not have the space to hold passengers in its building. So, rather than crowd the building, put pressure on the coffee shops and make passengers suffer toilets that just cannot be cleaned fast enough, it sends the passengers into the aircrafts. Now, you can sit strapped into your seat and ask for tiny cups of reluctantly served water (the sandwiches on low cost airlines not only being hugely expensive, but terrible in taste as well).

Aircrafts are denied permission to land and take off when there is low visibility. The minimum visibility required is called ‘Minima’ and is based on the limitations of the instrument landing system. Our pilot, jovial as ever, switched on the communication system and merrily told us at 6.10 am, barely after the aircraft had moved on to the runaway, “Visibility is less than 300 meters due to fog and we expect a delay in take off. Please bear with us.” At 7.25 am he came back to say, “Visibility has improved to 300 meters but we need 550 meters for take off. We are Number 5 in the take off sequence and expect a delay of another 30 minutes before the fog lifts.”

Let’s look at the math. A flight that was to leave at 6 am was in queue at Number 5 for take off. This was at about 7.30 am. So, it may be logical to assume that there would have been anywhere between 10 and 12 aircraft waiting to take off — or about 2,000 passengers in all, stuck inside those aircrafts, praying that they could somehow get out of the aircraft until the fog decided to vanish.

The question is: How does the BIAL justify holding you prisoner within a cramped low cost airline’s aircraft with food worse than prison? This is because, they say, it is not possible to accurately predict the onset and end of fog. De-boarding and boarding of an aircraft is a long process. If the visibility were to improve during this period the pilot would forgo an opportunity of a quick departure. Ha, ha!

The truth is that BIAL put in all those shops run by Nuance and Shoppers’ Stop and now there is no place for passengers. To return 2,000 passengers from fog-locked aircrafts would require an additional 20,000 sq feet of space, not to speak of additional toilets and housekeeping staff. This is perhaps the reason why BIAL sends you off like cattle into the aircraft.

The good news is that the airport has still to go through Phase 2 and Phase 3 (we are not sure what this advanced phase is actually called), and there is, literally, much room for development. The bad news is that BIAL has the right to operate the airport for the next 30 years. We just hope this simple expansion doesn’t take 30 years. Across the 4,000 acres of land, BIAL hopes to develop what is called an aerotropolis, or an airport city of the future; one that brings about development in much the same way that seaports once did in the 18th century.

Very noble. Meanwhile, could the immediate solution to passenger comfort call to knock off those stores? Now that would be noble too.