Karthik007’s Blog

The thick fog that descended upon the national capital on Saturday (Jan 3) morning wreck havoc on the air and rail traffic, throwing their schedule haywires. Over 150 flights and 100 trains were delayed while 21 flights and six trains remained cancelled.

The fog forced rescheduling of about 30 flights and diversion of 10 international flights to other destinations. After a relatively clear day yesterday, fog descended on the national capital shortly before midnight. It enveloped the IGI airport area at about 10 p.m. last night, forcing authorities to implement low visibility procedures (LVP).

About 19 morning flights for Chennai, Mumbai, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Bikaner, Ludhiana, Udaipur, Rajkot and Ahmedabad were cancelled as the runaway visibility range dipped to 100 metres early today, airport sources said. This was much below the required visibility range of a minimum of 150 metres for an aircraft to take off, the sources said, adding the main runway was being put to use for arrival and departures.

Meanwhile, Northern Railway cancelled six trains from Delhi and announced cancellation of another 13 trains from tomorrow till January 31. The trains that remained cancelled today were New Delhi-Agra Express, Mahabodhi Express, Kaifiyat Express, Delhi-Sultanpur Express, Delhi-Darbhanga Express and Mahananda Express.

The trains which will be cancelled from tomorrow till January 31 include Rewa Express, Farraka Express, Katihar-Amritsar Express, Bareilly-Allahabad Express and Jhansi-Lucknow Express. The cancellation came after more than 70 trains were consistently running late since the past one week due to the dense fog in several parts of north India. The late running trains also include the Rajdhanis from Mumbai, Howrah, Sealdah and Rejendra Nagar (Patna).

A Northern Railway spokesperson said several more trains have been short terminated in view of the foggy weather conditions. At the airport, some of the international flights, which generally operate during the night from here, also got delayed due to the fog.

About 26 flights, including 12 Kingfisher’s, operated in CAT-IIIB conditions, while 13 under CAT-III A, three in CAT-II and 135 under CAT I conditions during the LVP which was initiated at around 10.27 p.m. last night and continued for the longest duration of 13 hours 41 minutes of this fog season, till 12.08 p.m. today (Jan 3).

A total of 177 flight operated during the LVP period. The visibility began to improve around 10 am, when the runway visibility range (RVR) increased to 700 metres for main runway (28/10), while it remained at 400 m for the new runway. Passengers were a harassed lot and said they had not received any change in their flight schedules.

“I had to go to Kolkata for an urgent meeting, but my early morning flight was delayed by three hours and I don’t know whether it will take off,” said P K Basu, a passenger. He had left home around 5 a.m. to catch his flight and said he had not received any information regarding the delay. Fog has been affecting the flight movement here since Monday and has led to the delay of more than 500 flights and cancellation of around 75 others.