NEW DELHI: With moderate to dense fog expected to continue over Delhi-NCR and other parts of northern states for next two-three days, more flights are expected to be delayed in the national capital.
Atleast seven domestic flights were delayed and two cancelled, while seven international to and from Delhi were delayed , according to IGI airport at Delhi.
The meteorological department has forecast moderate fog over the next two-three days.
According to Skymet weather, dense to very dense fog has been observed over Delh-NCR, Uttar Pradesh (East), North and West Madhya Pradesh, northern and central parts of Rajasthan, and over few places of Punjab and Haryana.
An Air India official said that due to dense fog, the visibility has fallen drastically. The flight services in and out of Delhi are affected. Flights are holding up in different airport from 1 to 4 hours.
An Air India flight from Ahmedabad, scheduled to arrive at 7:20 am got delayed by three hours while another flight, coming from Pune, was delayed for over five hours. Many passengers at the airport were stranded for over three to four hours.
According to the weather department, visibility improved up to 500 meters by 10 am.
The Delhi IGI airport developer, DIAL (Delhi International Airports Limited), had recently in a report submitted to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) blamed the airlines largely for flight disruptions at Delhi airport, rather than the winter’s fog.
The blinding fog between November 30 and December 3 affected more than 900 flights.
A report compiled on the basis of daily records by DIAL to the DGCA, listing reasons for delays and cancellations, says 811 flights were disrupted because airlines were not prepared to land in low visibility conditions.
Another 97 flights couldn’t operate because visibility dipped below 50 metres.
In foggy conditions, airports and aircraft use sophisticated landing systems with pilots trained to deal with low visibility, technically known as Category-III or CAT-III, which has three classifications.
The IGI airport recorded 48 million passengers in year 2016. It has a three operational runways and is equipment to assist instrument landing systems in extreme low visibility.