Andhra Pradesh - Visakhapatnam   

Vizag airport back in action

Staff Reporter

AAI promises to make instrument landing system operational by mid-February

VISAKHAPATNAM: After over nine days, the fog seems to finally lift over Visakhaptnam airport, INS Dega. For the second consecutive day on Tuesday, flights landed and took off from the runway. From January 20, the airport was virtually veiled by a thick fog that did not allow a single flight to land due to low visibility, putting hundreds of air passengers to difficulty. Almost all the flights resumed their normal schedule on Tuesday except for Chennai - Vizag flight of Air Deccan and Mumbai-Hyderabad-Vizag flight of Indian.

On Tuesday also, visibility was poor till noon but improved considerably, allowing landing and take-off.

The minimum visibility should be around 4,500 metres to 5,000 metres — both for ATRs and Boeings — considering the fact that the airport is surrounded by hills. For the last nine days, the visibility was hovering around 1,500 metres to 3,500 metres due to the fog.

An important factor that hampered the operations was the non-installation of the instrument landing system (ILS).

Sources at the Airport Authority of India said that work on the ILS was apace and by mid-February it would be operational.

O.S.R.U. Bhanu Kumar, professor in meteorology, Andhra University, said formation and stagnation of fog was the cascading effect of three or more natural phenomena that were enhanced by the bad location of the airport and high pollution levels around it.

Passengers worst-hit

Passengers were the worst hit, especially the ones who had connecting flights to catch. While only a few could get hold of train tickets in the last minute, others had to take the bus or even risk travelling by a car to places like Chennai and Hyderabad to board the connecting flights.

"Everything was affected. Almost every big hotel suffered a loss of over Rs.2 lakhs on a daily basis.

The only people to make a few fast bucks were cab owners," said Jaydeep Biswas, director (sales) of The Park hotel.

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