Cyclone Fani keeps Kolkata airport officials on their toes, leaves flyers in lurch

KOLKATA: Fani fury wrecked havoc at the city airport on Friday morning, several hours before the severe cyclonic storm finally ploughed into Bengal. As the rapidly changing dynamics of the cyclone kept airport operator AAI and the airlines on tenterhooks, aviation regulator changed the timing for the airport’s closure and subsequent reopening, according to reports from the meteorological office.
On Thursday evening, DGCA had announced a shutdown from 9.30pm on Friday to 4pm the following evening. But as the cyclone gained speed and made rapid strides to make landfall in Odisha hours before what had been forecast the previous evening, DGCA revised the shutdown from 3pm on Friday to 8am on Saturday. The change left flyers and airlines in a quandary with the latter struggling to inform passengers about flight cancellations and many passengers landed at the airport to find they would not be able to travel.

Around 1pm, passengers of at least three flights remonstrated after the carriers announced the cancellations long after they had checked in and were waiting to board. CISF personnel and senior airport officials had to be called in to calm down the agitated passengers, coax them out of the security hold area and arrange for the cancellation or rescheduling of flights.
“Two flights — one bound for Bagdogra and another for Guwahati — were delayed from 11am to 1pm before their cancellation was announced. This left passengers fuming. Passengers of another flight who had similarly checked in also joined them. We somehow managed to calm them down,” said a senior airport official.
Hundreds of passengers who realised the flights had been cancelled only after reaching the airport complained that airlines did not inform them on time, leading to the needless hassle of travelling to the airport and back in inclement weather. As the crowd built up, queues at the refund and rescheduling counter got longer. “I had to wait in queue for nearly two hours to get the Friday afternoon flight to Guwahati rescheduled to Sunday morning,” recounted Dipti Sharma, a final year student of fashion designing, who was heading home for a week’s vacations.
A family of six from Nagpur, who were to catch a connecting flight to Gangtok, were stranded when the flight was suddenly cancelled. “We are travelling with two infants and had no clue what to do. We called the tour operator and she somehow managed to book us two train tickets to New Jalpaiguri that was leaving Sealdah station in two hours. We scrambled to board the train and save the holiday from getting ruined,” said Asit Dahate, who was travelling with his wife, children, sister and brother-in-law.
Patna resident Paramjit Singh and Agartala resident Lakshmirani Dhar were not so lucky. Singh’s flight to Delhi and Dhar’s flight to Agartala were cancelled and both of them along with their families had to spend the night at the airport. Dhar had a spine disorder and spent time lying on the floor while Singh and his son, who has a Saturday night flight to the US from Delhi, too spent an anxious night, hoping to catch the first flight to Delhi so that he could make it to the US-bound flight.
In the morning, passengers arriving by international flights, including foreigners, were in for trouble when they found the cab stand empty. Anticipating poor commuter flow, drivers of both metered yellow cabs as well as app cabs decided to skip work on Friday, leaving hundreds of passengers in the lurch. Finally, cops and airport authorities appealed to the state transport department to operate more AC buses to bail out the stranded passengers. Baisakhi Dasgupta, a Behala resident, said she got hold of a commercial vehicle that had come to the airport to drop someone and took a ride home at a premium.
Airport authorities have warned the situation may get worse on Saturday when the airport finally reopens. Though DGCA has tentatively said it may be 8am, it has left the decision to air traffic control. IndiGo, that operates over 100 flights from Kolkata airport daily, has decided to suspend all flights on Saturday to avoid further confusion.
(With inputs from Mayukh Sengupta)