High drama accompanies fog

Flight disruptions due to fog are now making passengers fume on cold mornings at Delhi's IGI airport. Low visibility set in at 7:30 pm on Thursday and intensified at 6:30 am on Friday. Till 9.30 am this problem remained and in this long spell of fog a large number of flights got delayed, rescheduled and some even diverted and cancelled. Visibility dropped to 50 m for around 20 minutes in the morning and no flights took off during that time. A delay of up to three hours was the norm till late Friday afternoon as dual use of runways could begin only after 4 pm for some hours. Almost all arrivals were late and in all about 100 flights were delayed. Things aren't likely to improve soon as the Met department warns this weather condition would continue over the weekend. Amid the usual complaints of airlines' apathy and inadequate infrastructure at the airport, Friday's most dramatic moment came about 8 am at terminal IB when Air Deccan cancelled its flight to Srinagar.

The passengers threw a fit as many of them had been booked to fly earlier on this sector but that flight was also cancelled and then the ticket was changed for Friday's flight. In a fit of rage, a young student of Aligarh Muslim university, Lubna Khan, got so angry that she threatened to immolate herself. She angrily 'appealed' to political leaders — Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Praful Patel and Ghulam Nabi Azad — to see how the airline was treating passengers. Clearly rattled by this outburst — that was being beamed live by news channels — and the threat of self immolation, Air Deccan sent Lubna and a woman accompanying her to Srinagar on a Jet Airways flight to Srinagar in the afternoon. "We have an arrangement with Jet Airways and Spicejet under which they may accommodate our passengers. Jet Airways flight was leaving around noon and our flight was in the early morning and couldn't take off due to bad weather," said an airline spokesperson.

But other passengers were not so lucky. Deepika, who was supposed to fly to Jammu on Air Deccan, reached the airport at 11 am to catch the 12.30 pm flight. "First the flight kept getting delayed and at 3 pm it was cancelled. I was supposed to take this flight on 19th and then it was rescheduled for Friday. No one from the airport or airline is here to assist passengers," she said. The other big issue with passengers of cancelled flights was that they were not getting full refund on their return tickets. "I have a Delhi-Jammu-Delhi ticket. The airline is ready to give full refund of Delhi-Jammu sector but wants to deduct cancellation charge on the return flight. When I haven't flown there and can't take the return flight because of the airline's fault, why am I being penalised?" asked Pranita Bhargava who has come from London with her mother just for a pilgrimage to the Vaishno Devi shrine near Jammu.

The condition of passengers of delayed flights was as bad. Ashok Singh and his wife checked in at 1.30 pm to catch a 3 pm flight to Guwahati. "The flight got delayed to 5.30 pm and there is simply no place to sit inside IB terminal. So I decided to wait outside," he said. On their part, airlines say fog sets in and lifts so quickly in Delhi that they just can't give any firm time of departure. The massive ATC congestion at IGI makes things worse. On Friday, a Kuwait Airways flight had to be diverted to Mumbai because of the sheer congestion here. Clearly passengers remain unimpressed with the talk of making Delhi a world class city as long as the airport remains a third class one. And the repeated advice of DGCA to airlines and airport for taking better care of passengers seems to be falling on deaf ears. Fog Helpline numbers: Spice Jet: 9871803333; Jet: 39893333, 6388; Sahara: 1800223020, 30302020; Air Deccan: 9818177008; Kingfisher: 18001800101

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