The Hindu : New Delhi News : Fog returns to cripple air and rail services from Delhi

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Sunday, Jan 04, 2009
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New Delhi

Fog returns to cripple air and rail services from Delhi

Staff Reporter

Photo: V. V. Krishnan

Fogged out: This here is the scene at Palam railway station in the Capital on Saturday.

NEW DELHI: After a day’s relief on Friday, dense fog returned to haunt the Capital on Saturday, playing havoc with airline schedules at Indira Gandhi International Airport and disrupting train services to and from Delhi in a big way.

As many as 150 flights were delayed and 30 more, eight of them international, were cancelled. Nearly 20 flights, including 13 domestic, were rescheduled, while seven international flights were diverted. Flights were delayed by 30 minutes to over five hours.

Dense fog hampered train movement all day with Northern Railway cancelling half a dozen trains from Delhi. A number of trains, including several Rajdhanis and one Shatabdi, were running late by several hours.

The state of affairs at the airport was chaotic, causing a great deal of misery to many passengers.

“Our flight was to take off from Mumbai at 6 a.m. It finally left at 8 a.m. because of bad weather in Delhi and we reached here at 11-30 a.m. From Delhi, we had to take a 10 a.m. flight to Dehra Dun. But we missed that as we arrived late. Now the next flight is scheduled to depart at 3 p.m. We hope this one takes off on time,” said a visibly tired Sanjay Agnihotri.

Visibility began to fall at the airport on Friday night itself. From 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. on Saturday, visibility dropped to about 25 metres, while the runway visual range (RVR) fluctuated between 75 and 150 metres. Flight operations at the airport were suspended between 2 a.m. and 6-30 a.m. with no departures and arrivals taking place.

Some airlines had to cancel outbound flights from Delhi to other cities like Shimla and Leh because of bad weather at airports there.

“My fiancée was to fly from Delhi to Dibrugarh by JetLite. It was delayed by over three and a half hours. Later the airline staff announced that the aircraft would not go to Dibrugarh airport as it did not have night landing facilities. The passengers would be taken to Guwahati and from there a coach would be arranged to Dibrugarh,” said Raman Singh, who himself had to go to the Middle East.

“We understand that not much can be done about the fog. But the airline should refund the difference in the ticket price if they are taking passengers only up to Guwahati instead of Dibrugarh. The passengers are not only getting inconvenienced, they are also being charged for the entire journey,” he complained.

A few carriers clubbed flights on some sectors due to low passenger traffic.

“I had to take a flight to Delhi at 7-25 a.m. I received an SMS from the airline last night saying that the flight had been cancelled due to ‘operational reasons’. I presume they might have clubbed two flights. We got delayed by more than an hour due to fog,” said Ravi Shankar, coming from Bangalore.

R. V. Naik, who wanted to rush to Hyderabad on getting news of the demise of a relative, booked a 9 a.m. flight, only to find out that the flight had been re-scheduled for 2 p.m. thanks to the fog.

“Low visibility procedures (LVP) were implemented around 10-30 on Friday night and remained in force till about 12 noon on Saturday. For most part of the LVP, the main runway was in use. The third runway was used for arrivals during the LVP after 9-30 a.m.,” said airport sources.

About 170 flights operated during the LVP.

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