BENGALURU: Turbulent weather and poor visibility at Bengaluru airport on Thursday night caused the diversion of 17 flights, three of them international ones, to Chennai. Due to gutsy winds and thunderstorms, flights could not land for an hour from 9.30 pm.

A spokesperson from airport operator, Bangalore International Airport Limited said, "Heavy rainfall accompanied by strong winds rendered the airport inaccessible for landing between 9.35 pm and 10.29 pm leading to the diversion of flights-13 domestic flights, 3 international passenger flights, and 1 international cargo flight was diverted to Chennai."

Flights later returned to Bengaluru after the weather conditions improved at Kempegowda International Airport.

Among the hundreds of passengers affected was Suman Paul, a supply chain professional at a private firm. He told TNIE, "Our Indigo flight (6e 6251) from Kolkata was going in circles around the Bengaluru airport awaiting permission to land. The captain told us that due to thunderstorms and poor visibility, they were not getting clearance to land. The flight then went to Chennai and refuelled there."

"We were literally sitting inside the aircraft for three hours in Chennai as we are not getting clearance from Bengaluru due to congestion there. We finally reached at 2.40 am on Friday instead of 9.30 pm (Thursday). I reached home at 4.30 am and was late to work on Friday because of that. However, no one could be blamed as it was an unavoidable situation," he said.

The airline staff took good care of the passengers and offered refreshments and water, Paul added.

Affected flights:

The international flights impacted were

KLM flight from Amsterdam to Bengaluru (KL-879) which reached at 2 42 am on Friday from Chennai, behind its original schedule by 3.5 hrs; Singapore Airlines flight (SQ 510) from Singapore to KIA which finally reached Bengaluru at 11.41 pm instead of 9.50 pm and Etihad flight (EY-238) from Abu Dhabi to Bengaluru which reached at 2.09 am on Friday from Chennai instead of 7 35 pm.

However, it also departed three hrs late from Abu Dhabi by 5 pm local time instead of 2 pm.

Among the domestic flights diverted from Bengaluru to Chennai were four each of Indigo (Pune, Kolkata, Lucknow and Madurai) and Air India Express (Hyderabad, Lucknow, Mumbai and Ranch) and two Air India flights to Delhi and Hyderabad. A Vistara flight to Delhi, an Akasa Air flight to Pune and Star Air to Jamnagar were affected.

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