Flights diverted, held up for late-night fog – Times of India

Kolkata: An overcast sky and high humidity in the city’s air through Thursday led to dense fog over airport late at night, forcing diversion of three Kolkata-bound flights. On Friday morning, the condition shifted 600km northward to Bagdogra; low visibility there held up flights from Kolkata to north Bengal for hours.
Fog formation is unusual in the second week of February as the mercury usually rises by then and humidity is low. But intermittent rain has kept the temperature low this year and also contributed to the humidity in the air, making it conducive for fog. Met officials said Kolkata was headed for a weekend chill as the northwesterly winds are set to return, pulling the minimum temperature down. While the city recorded a minimum temperature of 17.7°C on Friday, it could drop three degrees to 14°C on Saturday, the Met office predicted. The minimum temperature could stay around 14°C-15°C till Sunday, after which it could rise slowly, said Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) director G K Das.
As the primary runway at the city airport has been shut for repairs, any dip in mercury and fog during the closure could mean major disruption as only one end of the secondary runway is now equipped with instrument landing system that assists flight operations despite low visibility.
On Thursday night, visibility at Kolkata airport began to dip around 9pm and went below the 75-m mark by 10pm. All flights were delayed by 30 minutes to one hour. As visibility worsened, an Air India flight was diverted to Bhubaneswar airport around 1am on Friday, followed by two SpiceJet flights around 3.30am. Chess grandmaster Surya Sekhar Ganguly, who was returning from Amsterdam, was stuck on the Air India flight for over eight hours since Thursday evening, till he decided to leave the aircraft in Bhubaneshwar and took a train back home late on Friday. He posted a series of tweets to voice his frustration: “Amsterdam-Mumbai by KLM, reached in 8hrs. Mumbai-Kolkata by Air India 8hrs and still didn’t reach. Twice flight came back from Kolkata airport as the flight couldn’t land due to fog. How many more attempts to land a flight? Take off 8:55 pm Current time 5am!”
Bagdogra airport remained out-of-bounds for flights till 1pm on Friday. Consequently, all morning flights from Kolkata, starting with an IndiGo flight slated for departure at 8.15am, were held up in Kolkata.