Fog stalled flight operations at the Calcutta airport for more than two hours on Monday morning, delaying 60 flights and leading to the diversion of seven bound for the city.
Thousands of passengers were left stranded. Some alleged that they were forced to wait for hours inside the aircraft as the take-off was delayed.
Dense fog was reported across the city on Monday morning. A combination of moisture, clouds and light wind contributed to the formation of the dense fog, said a Met official.
The moisture is being provided by a Western Disturbance that is moving from the northwestern parts of the country to the Northeast, the official said.
“Fog is classified as dense when the visibility is less than 200m. When the visibility drops to less than 50m, it is called ‘very dense fog’,” the official said.
“Dense fog is likely on Tuesday morning, too.”
The visibility at the airport started dropping after midnight and operations had to be suspended from 7.10am till 9.04am, said an airport official. The Calcutta airport has the Category III-B Instrument Landing System, which allows flights to operate at a minimum visibility of 50m.
“However, the visibility went below 50m after 7am and no flights could take off or land. Conditions improved after 9am,” said an airport official.
He said seven flights bound for Calcutta were diverted to other cities. The last departure before the closure was at 3.25am and the last arrival was at 7.10am, the official said. Thirty inbound and as many outbound flights were delayed, he said.
An Emirates flight from Dubai, which landed at 9.04am, was the first to arrive after the weather improved. An Air India flight to Silchar was the first to take off, at 9.24am, after the operations resumed, the official said.
A SpiceJet flight from Delhi to Calcutta was diverted to Bhubaneswar. Two IndiGo flights from Delhi to Calcutta were diverted to Nagpur and Bhubaneswar and the airline’s flight from Pune was diverted to Hyderabad.
An IndiGo flight from Hyderabad to Calcutta was diverted to Raipur.
Air India’s Delhi-Calcutta flight was diverted to Hyderabad and Akasa Air’s flight from Bengaluru was diverted to Bhubaneswar.
Many passengers said their ordeal continued even after operations resumed because of a cascading effect.
An IndiGo flight headed to Delhi was stranded at the Calcutta airport for 10 hours. The scheduled departure of the flight 6E-2787 was 5.30am. It finally left around 3.30pm, said a passenger.
“We had to wait in the boarding area of the airport for more than six hours. There was hardly any communication from the airlines. We were only told that the flight had been delayed. We finally boarded the flight around 11.15am,” said Dhrubani Mishra, a research scholar at IIT Roorkee, one of the passengers.
The flight remained stranded even after boarding was complete.
“We were asked to get off the plane around 12.30pm before being asked to board again a little after 1.30pm. The flight finally left around 3.30pm. All the while, there was hardly any announcement. None of us had any clue about the possible time of departure. The passengers were stuck inside the aircraft for hours and some children and senior citizens complained of uneasiness. But no one from the airline offered any help,” alleged Mishra.
IndiGo did not reply to the allegations till late on Monday evening.
A Calcutta resident who was to take an IndiGo flight to Mumbai had arrived at the airport at 10.10am.
“My flight was scheduled to take off at 12.50pm but they could not say when it would take off,” he said. It finally took off after several hours of delay, said airport sources.