Fog disrupts over 75 flights

Dense fog on Saturday disrupted the schedule of over 75 flights at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here with about 21 of them, mostly coming to the national capital, being rescheduled.

While 53 domestic and international flights were delayed by over two to three hours, one from Ahmedabad was diverted to Jaipur after the visibility dropped to less than 50 metres and runway visibility to 100 metres as fog enveloped the airport
early in the morning, sources at the airport said.

Fog began to descend at the airport at around 5 am with the general visibility dropping to less than 50 metres at around 6.20 am while the runway visibility of main runway was 125 metres and that of new runway 100 metres.

The visibility remained less than 50 metres for about two hours and began to improve at around 8 am, the sources said.

About 70 flights, 54 domestic and 16 international, operated during the low visibility procedure period, which began at around 5.15 am and terminated at 8.55 am, airport officials said.

A total of 42 planes operated under CAT-I conditions, four under CAT II, five under CAT IIIA and 19 under CAT IIIB conditions, they said.

Unlike Thursday, when fog suddenly engulfed the airport and brought the flight operations to a standstill, on Saturday flights were operating under the poor visibility conditions.

On Thursday, over 200 flights were affected due to the fog. Since December 29 last year, over 1200 flights have been delayed while 150 were cancelled due to fog.