100 flights disrupted; govt lowers visibility norms to shore up operations

Dense fog in Delhi today led airlines to cancel, divert or delay around 100 domestic and international flights putting thousands of passengers to hardship prompting the government to step in with new steps like relaxing visibily criteria to mitigate the problem.

Around 38 flights including three in the international sector were cancelled while around 42 flights, including 14 international had to be diverted to Hyderabad, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Lucknow as the runway visibility in the IGIA dropped to less than 100 metres for several hours, according to government and airlines officials.

As Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) terminals descended into chaos as passengers remained stranded for hours at the airport amid reports of angry exchanges. Security personnel were forced to intervene to bring calm.

Some 30 flights were delayed while Air India has rescheduled its flight to Chicago, New York and Toronto.

With airline schedules going haywire after dense fog enveloped the capital since last night, civil aviation secretary SNA Zaidi reviewed the situation with stakeholders including officials of airlines, DIAL, directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) and metereology department.

Under the new rules put in place, the visibility range has been relaxed and brought down from 175m to 150m for operation of large aircraft and 150m to 125m for smaller planes, Zaidi told reporters after the meeting.

This step will facilitate flight operations at a lower visibility conditions and reduce delays, he said.

However, he said no flights will be operated if the visibility is lower than 50m.

The fog began to envelop the airport from around 7pm last evening reducing visibility to zero and remained dense for about 17 hours.

Also, aircraft which are not compliant with category 3B conditions(low visibility) will follow a separate "fog schedule' and such flights will be allowed to land only after 10am.

The new measures will also ensure that airlines do not carry out boarding of passengers till the visibility has reached 125m.

Directions have been also given to airlines to ensure they will adopt all possible means like e-mails and SMSs to keep the passengers informed of the latest status of flights.

"At present, at least 300 aircraft are category 3B compliant and about 2,100 pilots are category 3B trained. So we have a large number of aircraft and pilot who can land during low visibility conditions upto a visibility of 50m," Zaidi said.

Under category 3B instrument landing system, a flight can operate if the visibility is more than 50m.

"We've also taken a step that aircraft which are not compliant with category 3B conditions will follow a separate fog schedule," he said.

Those aircraft which are not compliant with the 3B instrument landing system will land only after 10am when the visibility is good. These aircraft, if they come to Delhi, will have to follow this rule, he said.

"The ministry has taken a number of steps to ensure that during fog and low visibility period, the safety of flight operations is maintained and inconvenience to passengers is minimised," Zaidi said.

"It is further reiterated that ministry and DGCA attache paramount importance to safety of flight operations during fog period," he said.

More troubles are in store for passengers with the Met Department making a forecast that the visibility at Delhi airport would go down to Cat 3 conditions (100m visibility) from 10pm tonight. It expects the situation to continue till 9am tomorrow morning.

According to records, 161 flights were operated today under Category 3B low visibility conditions.

"Met Department will update information on six hourly basis. If there is any significant change, the Met department will also issue their report earlier than six hours," Zaidi said.

"We have further issued directions to airlines that they will adopt all possible means to keep the passengers informed which includes e-mails, SMSes and interactive voice recording system," he said.

The civil aviation ministry also directed the Delhi international airport to ensure that all passengers, who are in the check-in area and boarding area, are kept informed through their flight information display (FID) systems.

Zaidi said that 150 FIDs have been installed and 75 in boarding areas will have dedicated pages to display the flight information.

Delhi international airport has also been asked to provide additional chairs, food and snacks. There is provision for 1,200 seats at present.

"We have also reached an understanding between air traffic control and airlines that when the visibility improves suddenly, and when there is a scramble for take off, there is certain order, which has been agreed to among the airlines and ATCO. This will avoid unnecessary problems that arrive in the sequencing of aircraft," he said.

"Diversionary airports such as Lucknow, Jaipur, Udaipur, Ahmedabad, Mumbai are all in a state of readiness to receive aircraft which will be diverted from the Delhi airport and all of these airports are equipped with category 1 visibility equipments," he added.