Over 18 flights getting delayed at the Patna airport owing to poor visibility due to dense fog. The city woke up to a foggy morning with the minimum visibility dropping to 100metre.

The first flight of the budget-carrier SpiceJet from Delhi reached Patna airport at 11.42 am, which was scheduled to land at 8 am. The same flight departed at 12.30 pm, which was the first that left the city airport on Thursday.

According to weathermen at the Patna Meteorological Centre, 1,000m visibility was witnessed at 6.30 am during the sunrise, however, it eventually dropped to 500m at 7 am and 100m around 7.30 am. “The required RVR visibility of 1,000m was achieved after 11.30 am and the flight operations started after 11.40 am,” weatherman Rajesh Kumar told this newspaper.

Altogether five flights suffered a delay of more than 2 hours, including two each of GoAir (both on Delhi routes) and SpiceJet (one each to Mumbai and Delhi) and one of IndiGo (Mumbai). Seven flights got delayed by one hour —four of SpiceJet (Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Amritsar and Pune), two of GoAir (Mumbai and Chennai) and one of IndiGo (Lucknow).

The delay of arriving flights led to bunching of aircraft affecting their departures and the other scheduled flights as well.
“Due to dense fog at Patna airport, flight operations are likely to be affected. Passengers are requested to get the updated status of flights from the airlines concerned before starting their journey for the airport to avoid inconvenience,” the city airport cautioned the passengers on social networking sites before the flight operations commenced on Thursday.

Despite the warning, chaotic scenes were witnessed at the city airport as people were made to stand in long-queues for baggage X-ray, check-in counters and frisking booths. Due to the over-crowding, several people were seen standing in the security hold area.

“All four flights were cancelled at the Darbhanga airport on Thursday due to bad weather,” said the airport director Biplab Kumar Mondal.

As per sources, two flights of SpiceJet returned to Bengaluru and Ahmedabad from midway and later got cancelled while the Mumbai flight landed at Kolkata and the flight from Delhi landed at Varanasi.

An irked passenger Mohammad Manauar wrote on Twitter, “Forced to book today’s late-night flight from Patna to Delhi. Flight cancellations are the new normal at Darbhanga airport. First, prepare the airport to fly. Then start the flights (sic).”

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