KOLKATA: Unseasonal fog at Kolkata airport on Monday morning led to one of the worst disruptions in recent years with visibility plunging to under 25 metres that brought operations to a halt for nearly four hours.
Five flights were diverted and scores of flights that were to depart in the early morning were delayed. The cascading effect of these delays were felt all day, affecting the on-time performance of many flights heading to Kolkata or taking off from the city.
The delays also led to crowding in the terminal, posing a challenge for the operator to ensure pandemic-related distance norms that are officially still in place. Though airlines tried to ease the situation by boarding passengers, crowding could not be avoided in both the departure hall and the security hold area as departure delays continued to plague the airport till the afternoon. The ripple effect of the delays also left passengers harried.
Lack of proper communication added to the irritation of flyers. The passengers of a Delhi-bound Air India flight began agitating when the flight — that was scheduled to depart at 6am — did not take off even after 10 hours. A flyer, Deepang Sheth, wrote on twitter about a brawl-like situation after angry passengers of the Delhi-bound flight demanded that they be boarded first when boarding was underway for the airline’s Mumbai-bound flight around 4.30pm.
Passengers of other fights also vent their frustration in the micro-blogging site. “We are still stuck at the Kolkata airport. Flight no 6E 854 is delayed for the 4th time today,” wrote a passenger, Abhinaba Hazra on Twitter at 11.34am. The Delhi bound flight was scheduled for an 8.45am departure but finally flew out of Kolkata at 12.08pm, almost three and half hours later.
While fog is usually reported at Kolkata airport between November and January, a cool night, high humidity and almost no wind provided the perfect condition for the formation of fog in the early hours of Monday. While visibility began to drop from 3pm, it dipped below 50m around 4.30am, forcing all operations to be suspended.
An hour later at 5.30am, the visibility dipped further to 25m, indicating that the situation would precipitate for a while. While the early morning departures were held up, six flights including three IndiGo Airlines and one each belonging to Air India, AirAsia and GoAir were diverted to Bhubaneswar, Ranchi and Guwahati. “There was a thick and dense layer of fog across the city and the airport since early morning, which had prevented the movement of flights for around four hours, leading to several delays and diversions. Flight movement had resumed immediately after the weather improved. Meanwhile, we had deployed additional personnel on the security hold area and asked housekeeping staff to increase the frequency of cleaning washrooms, smoking rooms and other areas,” said a senior official of the airport.
