Fog disrupts flight operations again at Delhi airport

New Delhi: Dense fog once again hit operations at the IGI Airport here on Monday, disrupting the schedule of around 50 domestic and international flights and leading to diversion of eight others.

Eight domestic and international flights arriving here this morning between 5.30 AM and 9.30 AM were diverted to Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and other airports, airport sources said.

Four Air India flights, including two international ones operating with Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, two SpiceJet flights, including one from Guangzhou and one flight each of JetLite from Ahmedabad and Oman Air from Muscat were diverted.

The flights had to be diverted as either the crew or the aircraft were not compliant to land in such low visibility conditions or runway visibility was below the airline's permissible minimum visibility limit to land in such conditions, they said.

Fog started to descend on the airport around 4:30 AM but thickened by 5.30 AM and the runway visibility dropped to around 100 metres while the general visibility was less than 50 metres.

The runway visibility at the both - main and third runway - hovered between 100 to 125 metres between 5.30 AM and 9 AM, due which many flights scheduled to depart in this period were delayed.

The minimum permissible runway visibility for flights to take off in low visibility conditions is 125 metres and 150 metres depending upon the size of the aircraft.

"As soon as the runway visibility rose to 125 metres, flights were allowed to take off," the sources said. The airport remained covered in dense fog till 9.30 AM after which visibility started to improve and it become more than 1,000 metres.