Dense smog hampered visibility at the Delhi airport this morning, affecting flight operations and leading to delays in schedule of over 50 flights by up to two hours as only one of the three runways could be used.
Poor visibility rendered one of the runways inoperable during the morning hours, leaving airport officials with just one airstrip of the total three to handle as many as 45 incoming and outgoing flights every hour.
Sources at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport said that due to low visibility on the shorter runway 9/27, they could only use runway 10/28 in the morning.
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The third runway 11/29 is shut from today for three days for maintenance.
The sources said that the second runway was opened after visibility improved.
Another source said that many morning flights were rescheduled for non-peak hours in the evening, throwing travel plans for many for a toss.
An airport official said that "most departures" were delayed.
According to Delhi airport's website over 50 domestic and international flights were delayed.
The India Meteorological Department said that runway visibility between 7am and 8am was less than 200 metres and improved around 11am.
"Due to heavy air traffic congestion at #Delhi, departure delays up to 90 minutess are expected at Delhi airport till 1900 hours," Jet Airways informed passengers on Twitter.
"Flights to and from Delhi may get delayed by up to 2 hours due (to) runway closure for maintenance," Vistara tweeted.
At around 7 am, four flights of IndiGo, SpiceJet, Jet Airways and Finnair had to do a go-around or abort landing. These include a flight each of IndiGo, SpiceJet, Jet Airways and Finnair, according to the airport official.
Atleast one IndiGo flight was diverted to Jaipur because the pilots were not trained to operate the plane under under poor visibility conditions.
The airport had already curtailed total number of flights because of the maintenance work planned on Runway 11/29 and airlines had cancelled many flights between November 7 and November 9.
As a result the airport will be handling only 70 per cent of the flights it witnesses everyday -- down from 1100 to 800. This means passengers will have fewer flight options to book and an increase in demand from travellers.
The smog has added to the woes of people flying in and out of Delhi as the airport is operating at 70 per cent of its capacity because of maintenance work on one of its runways.
The airport has been 800 flights per hour instead of 1,100 as airlines were told to curtail operations for three days. This means passengers will have fewer flight options to book as well as an increase in demand from travellers.
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