By IANS
New Delhi : At least 70 flights were delayed and five domestic arrivals were diverted to nearby cities due to poor visibility at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) here even as Delhi continued to enjoy a spell of warm weather Thursday.
Though fog in Delhi was not as dense as on earlier days, “poor visibility in the morning disrupted the schedule of at least a dozen flights”, sources said.
According to sources, flights bound for Mumbai, Kolkata, Jammu, Shimla, Bangalore and Hyderabad were delayed for nearly two hours as the runway visual range (RVR) dropped to 1,200 metres at 7.23 a.m.
Following this only one runway was used, creating a huge backlog of departing flights. Passengers remained stranded in their flights for almost one hour.
Sources said nearly 35 flights of Jet Airways, 12 of SpiceJet, 10 of Indian Airlines, six each of JetLite and Kingfisher were delayed for hours while two Deccan flights were cancelled.
Airlines sources said two Delhi-bound flights – one each from Indigo and SpiceJet – were diverted to Jaipur, and one Kingfisher flight was diverted to Ahmedabad. Similarly, two flights – one each of Deccan and JetLite – were diverted to Lucknow.
The sources said the situation eased in the afternoon with the increase in RVR to 2,500 metres.
“With increase in RVR the second runway was also made operational at 12.33 p.m. for two hours. The use of segregated runway was restarted at 4.14 p.m. to clear the backlog,” sources said.
Meanwhile, the capital witnessed a warm morning with the minimum temperate touching 13.2 degrees Celsius, six notches above normal.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said that the warm weather condition would continue till weekend but scattered rain Wednesday would bring back the chill.
“Till 8.30 a.m., the capital experienced 1.8 mm rainfall and there is nothing unusual about it. But the cloud cover will help the minimum temperature to stay above normal level,” said an IMD official.
Residents in the capital feel this year’s winter is strange with thick fog in mid December, severe cold in the first week of January (2.6 degrees Jan 1 and 1.9 degrees Jan 2) and a sudden rise in minimum temperature during the last couple of days.
But, IMD officials said it was nothing unusual and assured that winter is far from over.
“We are very much in winter and people will experience cold spell again. Wednesday night rain will bring back the chill soon,” the official said.