A joyride to see fog envelop the Nandi Hills turned fatal for a man after the bike he was riding collided head-on with a lorry at Yemalarahalli near Devanahalli on Tuesday morning.
Around 6.30 a.m., Rakhi and two of his friends, Chiranjeevi and Rakesh, were riding towards Nandi Hills. Four other friends on two motorcycles were following behind. Owing to heavy fog that had descended on the country-side, they did not see a lorry that was approaching in the opposite direction. While Rakhi died on the spot, two others suffered minor injuries, said the Vishwanathapura police.
Rakhi, who is from Andhra Pradesh, was working as sales executive in the city. The police said the rush towards Nandi Hills had increased in the past few days. as hundreds rode early morning to see the fog enveloped hills. “The problem is that many drive fast, and the narrow road is undivided. On Tuesday morning, there was dense fog and it would have been difficult to spot fast approaching vehicles,” said the police. The driver of the lorry has been arrested.
Flight schedule disrupted at KIA
The season of fog has descended on the city, with the international airport forced to close operations for nearly an hour on Tuesday morning.
With dense fog curbing visibility, the airport suspended operations between 4.44 a.m. to 5.27 a.m., resulting in a domino effect, which saw up to 69 flights, including 25 arriving flights, being delayed.
Five flights had to be diverted to Chennai airport temporarily, said officials from Kempegowda International Airport. Delays for some flights were more than two hours as flight schedules were disrupted in the morning.
Among those whose flight was cancelled was Devesh Aggarwal, an aviation expert. Scheduled to travel from the city to London, his British Airways flight was stuck in Chennai airport through the morning. “Even when the fog lifted, the flight did not come. The airlines claimed that the crew had reached their flight duty time limit and no one else could bring the flight here,” he said.
The flight scheduled for 7 a.m. on Tuesday morning would instead leave around noon on Wednesday.
According to the India Meteorological Department, visibility had dropped down to 50 m between 4.49 a.m. and lifted completely only at 8.30 a.m.
Currently, the runway at KIA operates through the CAT I Instrument Landing System (ILS), which allows take off only at visibility of 400 m and landings at 550 m. However, between November 15 and February 15, dense fog tends to descend in the area because of the open fields, said officials.
While this is the third day of the season when fog has disrupted flight schedules, the impact on Tuesday morning far exceeded what was seen earlier this month. However, a KIAL spokesperson said delays owing to fog would be a thing of the past after the installation of CAT II system — which reduces Runway Visibility Range to just 50 m — in the second runway scheduled to open in December 2019.