TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Chennai: Several morning flights due for take off from Chennai airport were delayed and nine incoming flights were diverted to other airports after smog, triggered by Bhogi bonfires, reduced visibility on Wednesday. Operations were affected for nearly two hours from 7.30am after visibility dipped to less than 300 metres. Normal operations resumed only around 10am, said airport officials.
Eight flights, including two international flights, were diverted to Bangalore, while a Saudia Airlines flight was diverted to Colombo. Flights hovered over the city for sometime, waiting for visibility to improve. More than a dozen departures and arrivals were delayed by a couple of hours, and as the schedule got disrupted, delays continued throughout the day.
“Almost all flights that approached the city were told to remain in the sky till visibility improved. As it did not, some of the flights had to be diverted to nearby airports,” said an official.
The disruption was quite severe this year, compared to previous two years. Bhogi bonfires had not disrupted aircraft movement at Chennai airport in January 2009. Flights departed more or less on time. However, recovery this time was quick thanks to the recent installation of the Runway Visual Range (RVR) instrument that can read and feed the visibility condition on the runway to the air traffic system.
There was mild smog early early morning but it was not thick enough to reduce visibility to less than 800 metres, the minimum requirement for flights to take off and land. Visibility usually dips below 200 metres when there is smog over Chennai, mostly during Bhogi and Deepavali. In 2008, visibility was erratic but in 2007 and 2006, smog caused a near shutdown of Chennai airport between 6am and 7am.
No comments:
Post a Comment