This Article is From Jan 02, 2010

Air traffic hit due to thick fog; flights delayed

New Delhi: Flight operations at the Indira Gandhi International airport came to a virtual standstill on Saturday morning due to the fog and a fault in the much-hyped CAT III B instrument landing system.

But the situation is now improving and flight are taking off and landing again.

The runway visibility which fell to a 100 metres in the morning has now increased to 800 to 900 metres.

Thick fog and a cable fault played havoc with flight operations in and out of Delhi since the wee hours on Saturday as over 40 international and domestic flights were delayed, cancelled or diverted to some other destinations. (In Pics: Flights delayed)

No flight could take off or land from 0200 hours when runway visibility dropped to 100 metres and a major glitch occurred in the cables connected to the Instrument Landing System (ILS) that measures and provides real-time runway visibility data to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower. This forced the ATC officials to suspend all flight operations.

The cable fault was rectified partially by 1000 hours and flight operations resumed at 1030 hours, the sources said, adding that several of the diverted international flights were given the green signal to come in to Delhi.

With runway visibility improving by mid-day to 800 metres, flights were resumed using two main runways equipped with Category-III B ILS that allows flight operations when runway visibility is less than 100 metres.

Earlier, none of them could be used as the instrument could not provide the information to the ATC due to the cable fault, they added.

Flights delayed:

  • Flight 9W2228 to Bhopal and S26143 to Bhubaneshwar delayed
  • Flight S26143 to Jabalpur, 6E201to Imphal, 9W2213 to Raipur delayed
  • S26171to Aurangabad, 9W2207 to Mumbai, IT4315 to Jaipur delayed
  • S2137 to Lucknow, IT201 to Bangalore, IT607 to Kolkata delayed
  • Flights 9W611 to Thoise and 9W801to Bangalore delayed
  • Flight 9W2251 to Chennai and SG501 to Bangalore delayed
  • Flights SG853 and SG851 to Srinagar, 9W2209 to Pune delayed
  • Flights IC657 to Calicut and S2101 to Mumbai delayed
  • Flight S2231 to Bangalore and 9W2279 to Kolkata delayed
  • Flight no. S2319 to Port Blair delayed
  • Flight CX708 to Hong Kong, GF131 to Bahrain delayed
  • Flight SQ405 to Singapore; EY211 to Abu Dhabi delayed
  • Flight QR233 to Doha; TK1071 to Istanbul delayed
  • Flight T5535 from Turkmenistan delayed
(With PTI inputs)
.