New Delhi, Dec 27: Thousands of passengers faced a harrowing time today as thick fog continued to wreak havoc at the IGI airport badly affecting schedules of over 200 flights.
 Around 30 domestic and international flights were diverted, 25 others, including five international, were cancelled and over 150 flights were delayed by upto six hours, an airport official said.
 Due to inclement weather conditions here, Air France flight to Paris, Air India flight to Kabul, Kuwait Airways flight to Kuwait City and Jet flight from Dubai and Kuwait Airways flight from Kuwaiti capital were cancelled.
 Jet has also cancelled its flights to New York and Newark from Brussels due to bad weather conditions in the US. But it is operating its flight on Delhi-Brussels and Mumbai-Brussels sectors.
 Air India flight (AI-101) to New York, which took- off from here yesterday, was diverted to Washington due to snow storm in eastern part of the US and heavy snow at New York airport.
 “The flight will operate to New York as soon as runway at JFK will open. Also flight AI 144 from Newark to Mumbai of 26th December has also been struck at Newark due to heavy snow on the runway,” an Air India spokeperson said.
 Fliers had a tough time for the third consecutive day at the international airport today. Many were seen running from airport help desk to the airline counters to get the status of their flights.
 “I had to attend marriage of my nephew in the US on December 30, but my flight has been cancelled today. I don’t know how I will attend the ceremony,” R K Chadda, who was arguing with the helpdesk person at the IGI airport, lamented.
 The airline is not giving us any update or promising a seat in the flight, he alleged.
 According to airport sources, most of the flights coming from European countries are bringing in smaller aircraft, which have less capacity, due to which their is acute shortage of seats.
 Fog started to envelope the airport around 7.30 pm yesterday and gradually became dense. The runway visibility hovered between 50 to 175 metres through the night, resulting in disruptions in flight operations
 Airport operations were affected for 14 hours from 8:36 pm yesterday after fog reduced the runway visibility range (RVR) to less than 50 metres, forcing airport authorities to implement low visibility procedures to ensure safe movement of aircraft after landing.
 Most of the flights were diverted between 12 AM and 2.30 AM, when the RVR hovered between less than 50 metres to 75 metres. The LVP was lifted around 10.36 AM.
 During the 14-hour LVP period, a total of 257 flights operated using various categories of instrument landing system (ILS). 122 flights landed using advanced Category III B ILS while 23 used Category III A, 28 Category II and 84 used Category I.
 Twelve flights to Bangalore, Nagpur, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Jaipur could not take off from Delhi due to dense fog while 11 from these cities could not land in the capital.
 Twenty-three flights were diverted to Bangalore, Lucknow, Japipur, Ahmedabad, Mumbai and other cities.
 Yesterday, over 40 flights, including 14 international ones, were diverted while 38 were cancelled.
 The airlines have asked the flyers to confirm the status of their flights from call centres before leaving for the airport.

Lastupdate on : Mon, 27 Dec 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Mon, 27 Dec 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:00:00 IST