Visibility poor, 80 flights held up at IGI

8220;Normal visibility dipped to 650 meters in the morning while Runway Visibility Range RVR was around 1,000 meters. As a result, most of the arrivals and departures were delayed,8221; an airport official said. Officials said delay in flights ranged between 30 minutes and four hours.

8220;An Indian Airlines flight, scheduled to arrive from Patna at 10.30 am, arrived at 2.35 pm,8221; the IGI official said. 8220;There was heavy backlog till evening; almost every arriving flight had to wait in the air.8221;

With the ILS not working, some international arrivals were also delayed. The situation became somewhat brighter after 10.30 am, when visibility improved.

At a recent meeting of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation DGCA with airline representatives and airport authorities to tackle fog-related problems, it was decided that morning and evening peak hours would be slotted to airlines with compliant aircraft and trained pilots to operate flights in dense fog in near-zero visibility conditions.