Fog in Delhi clogs up

Among the Delhi-bound flights from the city’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA), there was an average flight delay of four hours.

Delhi-bound flights that were diverted to Mumbai include British Airways flight BA143 that landed on Mumbai’s runway at 4:16 am on Tuesday. Other flights include two Jet flights (9W547 & 9W581), a Go Air G8375, a Swiss Air SU533 from Moscow and an Aeroflot flight 533 from Muscat that landed in Mumbai at 3 am.

According to a spokesperson of the Mumbai International Airport Limited, six Delhi-bound flights had to be diverted to Mumbai because of dense fog over Delhi. Because of this, the airport had to operate under low visibility procedures (LVP) for over 13 hours. The Delhi-bound Go Air flight G8375, that was supposed to take off from Mumbai at 2.09 pm, had to be diverted back to the CSIA because of fog over the national capital.

The Mumbai-Delhi route is the country’s busiest air route and has been ranked as the world’s sixth busiest. With 75 to 80 per cent of the total domestic flights in the country flying on this route, this sector has been badly affected.

Weather conditions in Delhi also disrupted travel plans of passengers from other airports.

In a separate incident at the Mumbai airport, a Sharjah-bound Air Arabia flight from Bangkok had to be diverted to Mumbai because of a window crack on the flight.