Fog affects schedule of 25 flights

Twenty-five flights, originating from here were delayed either due to weather conditions at the airport and at the destination or due to operational reasons.

Only one flight was cancelled today, airport sources said.

There was no diversion of flights today unlike yesterday.

Yesterday, dense fog had thrown the schedule of around 160 flights out of gear after the airport remained shut for about one-and-a-half hours due to poor visibility and subsequent backlog of departing flights.

Fog started to descend over the airport late last night, forcing authorities to implement low visibility procedures on the airport's two operational runways -- main (28/10) and third (29/11).

The visibility on the third runway remained low through the night and in the morning but it was available for flight operations.

The runway visibility on third runway dropped to 50 metres between 1 AM and 4 AM, but it was open for operations for flight landing with the assistance of CAT-IIIB instrument landing system, which permits a CAT-IIIB compliant plane to land when the visibility is upto 50 metres.

The visibility on the main runway was around 1,000 metres and operations were smooth on it, they said.

Between 12 midnight and 7 AM today, a total of 40 flights operated with the assistance of instrument landing system.

The airport witnessed its worst fog of this season yesterday, badly affecting the schedule of domestic and international flights.