Air, rly travellers not put off in spite of delays, cancellations

At the Palam Airport, there was not a single landing between 9 p.m. on Monday and 11 a.m. on Tuesday because of delayed and diverted flights. About 20 flights were expected to land during this period.

The delays may have affected the number of passengers on flights marginally, but it was too early to arrive at a conclusion, according to N.V.Sridhar, director, Airports Authority of India. He said the trains were all heavily booked for the holidays, but were delayed and hence flights were more in demand. Mohini, an Indian Airlines air hostess, arriving in a delayed Bombay-Delhi flight at 2.30 p.m., said that the plane was jampacked.

The passengers, according to airport officials, were safe, despite the fog.

According to a top official of the Air Traffic Control, the pilots fly by Instrument Flight Rules and do not need to see anything outside. They can read the distance on the instruments in the cockpit.

“At present the pilots are landing even when the visibility is as low as 550 metres,” Deputy Director (Aerodrome) M.L.N. Agarwal said. “The Instrument Landing System at Delhi airports are in category I. Category II systems are likely to be installed by January. But that will not be useful for us as we have no trained pilots for using the facility,” he said.Category II will make landing possible even when the visibility is 400 metres. But the airports at present have category II special ground lighting. “Hence, even at 550 metres landing is possible,” he said.

The delays are caused because the flights do not take off at all, anticipating a difficult landing as per weather forecasts, according to Agarwal and Sridhar.

The flight from Bangalore was supposed to leave at 6.50 a.m. but took off at 9.45 a.m. and reached Delhi at 1 p.m. A Jet Airways flight from Bangalore hovered over the Delhi runway for half an hour because there were seven planes in queue, a passenger said.

According to Agarwal, pilots, when told of bad visibility by the ATC, have to choose between holding on in the sky or going to a nearby airport where there is better visibility.

Sandeep, who came from Chennai in a Jet Airways flight and lives in the US, said his plane must have spent an hour over the Delhi runway before it landed. “I think the pilots here are a bit too cautious. In the US this kind of fog is not a big problem and a plane lands every 30 seconds in the airports there,” he said.

An IA flight from Ahmedabad which was to have arrived at 10.30 a.m. on Monday had not arrived by 3 p.m. on Tuesday. It took off from Ahmedabad but was diverted back and finally took off only on Tuesday afternoon. “I know my entire day will be spent here,” said Aravindan, who has been waiting to receive a Korean delegation from Ahmedabad on behalf of the private firm he is working for.At the Indira Gandhi International Airport, Francis Meyer, who arrived on an Air France flight, said that his plane reached Delhi at 11 p.m., but was taken back to Bombay because of poor visibility. “It did not land though we could see the lights through the window,” he said.

Eighty Indian students arrived in an Air Ukraine flight at 4 p.m., but only after a detour through Ahmedabad. “The plane was to leave Kiev at 4.10 a.m., but left at 2.45 p.m. due to fog in Delhi,” Kanv Parashar, an engineering student said. “It then landed in Ahmedabad and waited there till 3 p.m.,” he said.

Despite the delays and cancellations, journeys continue, whether undertaken by businessmen, students, housewives or public figures like T.N. Seshan and cricketer K. Srikanth who came on the Bombay flight which was delayed by four hours. And the sentiment among flight and train operators is the same. "Never mind the delay. Let us be sure we are safe".