Thousands of passengers flying out of Kolkata or coming to the city were stranded for hours, some of them for nearly a day, as dense fog in several parts of the country forced delays and cancellations of flights.
At Kolkata airport, officials said, 238 flights flying in and out of the city were delayed and 41 were cancelled between 1am and 6pm on Monday. The delays continued till late in the evening.
“The delayed flights include 107 arrivals and 131 departures, all due to the weather. Twenty-one arriving flights and 20 departing from Kolkata were cancelled,” said a senior official of Kolkata airport.
While the city airport’s operations were disrupted till noon because of early morning fog, the delays through the day were triggered by dense fog in cities like Delhi and Dhaka and the northeastern states.
Many passengers at Kolkata and other airports were involved in arguments with airline staff as flight timings continued to get pushed back and those at the counters did not have information about when a particular flight would take off.
Six incoming flights to Kolkata had to be diverted in the morning because poor visibility had made landing impossible, said officials.
A Qatar Airways flight from Doha was diverted to Dhaka while a Vistara flight from Delhi had to land in Hyderabad.
Two Air Asia flights bound for Kolkata from Bangalore went to Hyderabad, while IndiGo’s flights from Pune and Bangalore were diverted to Nagpur, said an airport official.
Airport and airline officials said fog delays had been happening in north India for a couple of days but Monday’s were the worst.
A combination of moisture, clouds and light wind contributed to the formation of the dense fog, said a Met official.
“If visibility is less than 200 metres, it is called dense fog. When the visibility drops to less than 50 metres, it is very dense fog,” said G.K. Das, director of India Meteorological Department, Kolkata.
At Dum Dum, visibility dipped below 50m on Monday.
The thick blanket of fog over north India extended till Bihar, and till Murshidabad and Birbhum in Bengal. On Monday, the fog rode the strong northwesterly winds to shroud North and South 24-Parganas and Kolkata.
Das said similar conditions were expected on Tuesday.
A family from Calcutta that was returning from the US was stranded at Delhi airport since Sunday night.
“We arrived in Delhi from New York at 9pm (on Sunday), which was ahead of schedule. However, the IndiGo flight from Delhi to Kolkata, which was scheduled at 2.35am, got cancelled,” said the woman, travelling with her husband and children.
“There was complete chaos at the IndiGo counter. Only two women at the counter were handling passengers. There were many passengers changing baggage tags because of the cancellations,” she said.
“Finally, when one passenger started shouting, the airline opened more counters to assist the stranded passengers.”
The family had booked a hotel as the airline told them they could be accommodated only on an afternoon flight on Monday. That flight too was delayed, from 4.25pm to 7.30pm.
Many were stuck at Kolkata airport.
“Many passengers had examinations, job interviews and business appointments. They were desperately requesting airline staff to accommodate them on flights that were departing. But many were refused and given seats on later flights,” said an airport official in Kolkata.
Around 2.15pm, a flight information display system at the domestic arrival terminal outside Gate 3 showed that six out of seven flights were delayed. They were from Delhi, Bangalore, Bagdogra, Chennai and Port Blair.
Many passengers were seen making frantic phone calls to inform people about the delays.
Ballygunge resident Debabrata Datta, who was travelling to Goa with his wife, son and daughter-in-law, were booked on a SpiceJet flight that was scheduled at 2pm.
“It has been pushed back to 6.50pm. We don’t know what to do. We would probably go to a nearby restaurant, spend some time there and come back,” he told this newspaper around 1pm.
The airport’s departure waiting area, which also has ticket counters of several airlines, was packed with people who had their flights delayed and cancelled.
Two teenage table tennis players were among them. Sayanika Maji, 15, and Diya Bramhachary, 16, stay at a table tennis training academy in Gurgaon. They had come to Kolkata for a tournament.
They had to board a 4.20pm SpiceJet flight to Delhi but it was rescheduled to 7.15pm.
The two were waiting with their parents, who had come to see them off.
Kinga Thinley, from Bhutan, was headed to Mumbai with four colleagues.
They landed in Calcutta around 12.30pm and were booked on an IndiGo flight to Mumbai at 4pm. The flight was cancelled.
“We have rebooked ourselves on an 11am flight on Tuesday. But we have not been provided with accommodation. We have been asked to wait,” said Thinley.
The departure waiting area had more people than seats. Many passengers were standing.
Almost every ticket counter in the departure area had people enquiring about tickets.
“Due to the low visibility and dense fog conditions across North India, IndiGo flight operations were impacted on Jan 14, 2024. This had a cascading effect on our operations throughout the day...,” said IndiGo in a statement.
Air India too issued a statement. “Air India regrets the disruption to operations arising from the last few days’ dense fog in North India, including at our main Delhi hub, which resulted in some diversions and desynchronisation of aircraft and crew rotations. We are working hard to restore schedules, and sincerely regret the inconvenience caused to our passengers,” it said.