KOLKATA: Flight movement between Kolkata and Bagdogra suffered for the second day in a row as heavy rain and poor visibility in north Bengal prevented flights to land and take off from Bagdogra before 1pm, forcing seven cancellations and 22 delayed departures and arrivals.
The day started with two flights taking off for Bagdogra but returning, as weather deteriorated in the hills. As the day progressed the situation went from bad to worse as no flight could land or take off from Bagdogra forcing passengers to be stuck inside either aircraft or airports for several hours. Bagdogra airport itself was particularly crowded with flyers found sitting on the staircase and trolleys after the designated sitting areas ran out of space.
On Monday the situation was worse when only two flights out of 29 could take off and land owing to the inclement weather and passengers stuck on Tuesday feared a similar fate till the rain stopped and visibility improved before resumption of flight movement at 12.56pm.
“Usually we operated flights till 5pm. But since we could start movement of flights only from 1pm and had a large backlog of flights to clear, we extended the watch hour till 6pm. During that period, 22 flights could be accommodated while seven flights had to be cancelled,” said P Subramani, the Bagdogra airport director.
The surge of tourists in north Bengal and Sikkim has come down from this week as schools reopened after summer vacation. But airline officials said there are a significant number of bookings in the run up to the weekend, courtesy Friday being a school holiday owing to Rath Yatra, resulting in an extended weekend.
On Tuesday morning as flights from Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad failed to land in Bagdogra, they started getting diverted to Guwahati and Kolkata throwing their schedules haywire. Many started looking for alternative options as well, particularly after learning that on Monday many diverted flights had returned to the point of departure after waiting at other airports for several hours.
“I was onboard UK-725 Delhi to Bagdogra28/06. Due to bad weather at Bagdogra pilots attempted to land at IXB but couldn’t, diverted to Guwahati waited for 3hrs still weather hadn't been approved. Finally the flight came back to Delhi,” wrote a user with the Twitter handle @BajrangB on Tuesday.
Airlines kept sending messages on Twitter and personal mobile numbers regretting the delay, but several harried passengers said the messages were useless as they couldn’t provide accurate updates about the flights.
