PATNA: After a week of disruption in air traffic due to foggy weather, flight operations at
Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport at Patna has finally started getting back to normalcy with improved visibility.
Flight operations started at the city airport from 12:30pm on Tuesday and no flights were diverted, though four flights remained cancelled .
Till Monday, flights operations used to start at the city airport not before 2pm and several flights got grounded here due to dense fog in the evening hours on two consecutive days in the last week. Besides, six flights were cancelled on Monday and 15 on Sunday due to poor visibility.
As per the visibility criteria owing to short length of runway at the city airport, flights are allowed to operate only when the minimum visibility is 1200meters.
"Flight operations were comparatively smoother on Tuesday owing to improved visibility. The visibility was at 900 meters around 10am and it went up to 1100m by 12 noon, allowing flight operations to start from around 12:30pm, when the visibility was 1200m," said a senior official in
Airports Authority of India (
AAI) at Patna airport.
The official added that Air India's Alliance Air has already cancelled one of its Delhi- bound flights from Patna airport for one month, IndiGo cancelled two flights and GoAir cancelled one flight from Patna airport on Tuesday. The two cancelled flights of IndiGo were scheduled to fly to Delhi and Bengaluru respectively, while IndiGo's flight was to fly to Delhi.
Total 27 flights fly on inbound routes to Patna and similar number of flights fly on outbound routes from the city airport under the revised winter schedule, which was made effective on December 1 and continue till February 15.
Though airport officials claimed that the flight operations were smoother but a group of around 30 Sikh persons had heated arguments with executives of IndiGo
airlines at its counter at airport's terminal building on Tuesday afternoon.
"Our Delhi- bound flight got cancelled on Monday and we were given tickets for another flight for Tuesday. However, even that flight kept on getting delayed and the airlines' staffs are not giving proper information," one of the aggrieved passenger told reporters.
Airlines executives on the other hand, claimed that such scuffle is quite common during disrupted flight operations due to foggy weather. "Another passenger was completely furious as his flight got delayed and he had another connecting flight to UK from Delhi. We were telling him that the required arrangements would be done but he was restless. Such incidents keep on happening when flights get delayed and we try our best to handle all passengers peacefully," said a executive of a private airlines at Patna airport.
