300 Flights Delayed At Delhi Airport

Dense smog in Delhi/NCR continues to play spoilsport for flight passengers as almost 300 flights got delayed at IGI Airport by up to two hours. The day to day operations were also affected due to poor visibility. Delhi has been witnessing heavy smog for the last couple of days leading to poor air quality.

One of the runaways at the airport also became inoperable during the early morning hours on Wednesday which left the airport officials with just one airstrip of the total 3 for managing the incoming and outgoing flights every hour. Authorities at the airport informed that several morning flights were rescheduled for “non-peak” evening hours which resulted in heavy chaos at the airport.

More Details

Many flights had to either do a go-around or abort their landings due to low visibility. This included flights of Indigo, Jet Airways, Finnair and SpiceJet, as per the airport officials. The airport has decided to curtail the total number of flights due to the ongoing maintenance work for Runway 11/29 and a number of flights have been cancelled as well. As a result, the IGI Airport will be managing only 70% of the flights on a daily basis, cutting the numbers from 1100 flights to 800 which means that passengers will now have fewer flight options.

Quotes-Unquotes

Sources at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport said that due to low visibility on runway 9/27, they could only use runway 10/28 in the morning.

The third runway 11/29 is shut from today for three days for maintenance. The sources said that the second runway was opened after visibility improved. An airport official said that “most departures” were delayed all day.

“Due to heavy air traffic congestion at #Delhi, departure delays up to 90 minutes are expected at Delhi airport till 1900 hours,” Jet Airways informed passengers on Twitter.

“Flights to and from Delhi may get delayed by up to 2 hours due (to) runway closure for maintenance,” Vistara tweeted.