100 fights Delayed as Thick Fog and Cold Wave Grips Delhi

Written by: Arjita Gupta

Edited by: Aniket

Last Updated: January 04, 2023

As Delhi gets enveloped in a thick smog with visibility dwindling to 50 meters at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, on Monday from 10:00 PM to Tuesday at 4:00 AM, around 100 flights had to be delayed. Also, 5 other flights between 11:00 PM to 12:00 AM Monday were routed to Jaipur. At 11:25 PM Monday, the first diversion occurred for a SpiceJet flight from Jabalpur to Delhi.

After this, a Dubai flight (P4999) was diverted at 11:35 PM, followed by a diversion at 11:36 PM for a GoFirst Mumbai to Delhi flight (G8 341), and then two other flights - Ahmedabad-Delhi Air India flight (AI 816) and Dubai-Delhi flight (VTVRV) at around 11:45 PM. According to an airport official, only CAT-III B-compliant pilots or airlines were given permission to land between 10.30 PM and 4:00 AM.

The Delhi airport had already tweeted at 10:10 PM on Monday that there was low visibility and procedures necessary were in place to take care of the situation, requesting the passengers to keep a check with their airlines for the latest information. The low visibility procedures aimed to ease out the landing of the flights when the visibility goes down further from 800m.

In the first level of precaution, the CAT-I procedures guide pilots. CAT-II flights and pilots if permitted can land if the visibility even dips to less than 550 meters. The situation worsened on Tuesday because of intense fog, spreading to Punjab and through the Indo-Gangetic plain. Delhi recorded a temperature of 16.1°C on Monday amidst cloudy skies and fog. The temperature is three degrees less than the normally expected temperature at this time of the year.

And the lowest temperature recorded was 14.7°C in Jafarpur, gripping the city in a cold wave. A scientist from the IMD (India Meteorological Department), RK Jenamani said that several airports in the northern part of the country had low visibility and operations here were impacted between Monday 6:00 PM and Tuesday 1:00 PM. Unless the visibility at the airport is 125 meters, no flights can depart from the airport. Thus, delays also impacted the departure of flights.