Kolkata airport back to normal after 16-hour shutdown, flights full till Monday

KOLKATA: Normalcy returned to Kolkata airport after close to 40 hours as flights started coming in and flying out on schedule from Sunday morning. However, because of bunching of passengers on different flights that had been cancelled or rescheduled over the past two days, all flights to and from Kolkata were packed to capacity till Monday with some airlines even running extra flights to accommodate flyers. When cyclone Fani passed by Kolkata early on Saturday, it spared the city significant damage, except at the airport, where it disrupted flight schedules. The airport was shut for 16 hours from 4pm on Friday as a precautionary measure and resumed operations only from 8am on Saturday.
“The situation started getting better from Saturday evening when IndiGo, that operates the most number of flights from the airport, resumed operation. By Saturday night, most flights started arriving as per schedule. By Sunday morning, things were back to normal with all flights departing and arriving as per schedule,” said Kaushik Bhatacharjee, the airport director.
He added that 147 flights landed and 142 departed from the airport between 7am on Saturday and 7am on Sunday. “Normally, we have around 220-226 flights a day. We had an average flight movement of around 145 flights on Saturday. But on Sunday, the average flight movement was according to schedule,” the director said.
Though the airport reopened from 8am, airlines couldn’t start operations immediately as most had avoided parking their planes in the city overnight on Friday. The shutdown led to the delay or cancellation of 95 flights flying out of the city and 87 flights landing at the airport.
Anticipating damage to the infrastructure at the airport, IndiGo Airlines, which operates nearly half of the 222 flights from Kolkata daily, had announced suspension of all flights on Saturday. Though the airport resumed operations on Saturday morning, IndiGo flights stayed grounded. It was only around 3.30pm that IndiGo resumed operations from Kolkata.
“From Sunday, all our flights ran on schedule. In fact, since we are carrying passengers whose flights were cancelled on Friday and Saturday, all our flights to and from Kolkata are packed to capacity at least till Monday,” said a source.
An airport official added that at least one airline ran an extra flight from Delhi to Kolkata to cater to the extra rush.
“I had a harrowing time on Friday as my flight to Delhi was cancelled. The airport, too, was a mess with no taxis and confused airport and airline officials moving around. It was good to find the airport back in shape on Sunday and my flight was on schedule,” said Pradeep Saini, a Lake Town resident.