Flight delays due to bad weather continue in North, East India

Rain improved visibility in Delhi but consequential delays impacted operations of around 200 flights operating out of the city airport, including six that were cancelled.

The delays at the airport, which caters to 650 flights a day, had been about 90 minutes each, on average, said a source.

A source at the airport said ttwo international flights, an Air France one to Paris and a Continental Airlines flight to Newark, and six domestic flights, to Chandigarh, Amritsar, Kolkata, Jaipur and Bangalore, were cancelled.

Delhi airport has been witnessing dense fog since Christmas and various flights have been cancelled and diverted in the past three days.

“We are operating efficiently on the CAT III system but consequential delays cannot be controlled, as various airports in different parts of the country are also fog-blinded,” said an executive of a full-service carrier, who did not want to be identified.

Airports impacted by low visibility are Jaipur, Chandigarh, Amritsar and Lucknow in the northern region, Patna and Varanasi in the eastern part and Agartala and Shillong in the northeastern part.

The executive said lack of a proper instrument landing system at these smaller airports was the reason behind the delays. Delhi is the only airport with a CAT-III landing system. All other airports across the country have the basic CAT-I facility, except Kolkata, which has CAT-II.

A CAT-I landing system can facilitate landing and takeoff if the visibility is up to 550 metres. This is not enough for the northern and eastern parts, hit by severe winter and fog. In most places here, visibility falls to less than 100 metres, requiring CAT-III, which allows takeoffs at visibility as low as 50 metres. CAT-II facilitates operations at visibility of 350 metres and above.