Fog affects air services in Bangalore, flights delayed

Fog affects air services in Bangalore, flights delayed

Rasheed Kappan

Poor visibility grounds many flights, over 2,000 passengers stranded

A British Airways flight from London was diverted to Chennai

The visibility had dropped below category-I

BANGALORE: Over 20 domestic and international flights were stranded at the city’s HAL Airport on Tuesday as the fog at dawn reduced runway visibility to below the prescribed minimum standards.

The space-starved departure and arrival terminals saw a sea of frustrated passengers. The arrival of international carriers Gulf Air, British Airways and Air Arabia was delayed by over an hour.

The British Airways flight from London was diverted to Chennai. Several flights scheduled to depart at about 6 a.m. could leave only after 8 a.m., when the weather cleared.

Delayed for two hours were the departures of seven Kingfisher flights, three flights of Jet Airways, two of Indian, six of Air Deccan and two of Indigo, Air Traffic Control sources told The Hindu.

Built and upgraded to handle a maximum of 700 passengers an hour, the airport terminal building had over 2,000 passengers occupying every inch of space. The overstretched facility just could not handle the rush, admitted the airport officials.

“This kind of major fog-related delays happen about a dozen times a year. You won’t know when the fog clears and the aircraft gets the green signal to take off. Airlines usually do not reschedule flights for such problems. Passengers simply have to wait and suffer,” a top official said.

The Indian flights to Delhi and Kolkata left at 8.15 a.m., two hours behind schedule. Air Deccan flights to Delhi and subsequently to Pune were delayed.

The flight connecting Bangalore to Goa went about two hours and 15 minutes late. A Jet Airways flight to Chennai could take to the skies only at 9.30 a.m., almost three hours behind schedule.

The return flight schedule was affected just as the other airline schedules had their cascading effect throughout the day.

The flights could not land or take off at the HAL airport because the visibility had dropped below the Category-1 ILS level. The minimum requirement at this level is 1,200 metres.

Flights are not allowed to take off too, because any emergency landing would require the prescribed visibility. Aircraft landing from the Koramangala side requires an even higher visibility for the runway in use, at least 2,800 metres, the airport official said.

The Delhi airport has a Category-3 ILS runway that lets aircraft land even with a visibility of 100 metres.