Air ‘severe’; flight, train services disrupted

Flights, trains and road traffic weer disrupted due to dense fog on Wednesday morning. According to officers at the Delhi airport, three inbound flights were diverted, 24 cancelled and several rescheduled due to low visibility at the airport. The railways had to cancel seven trains and several trains were running late due to fog. This apart, traffic on the roads was very slow in the morning hours. 

The officers at Delhi’s IGI Airport informed that the visibility at the airport was below 50 metre for around five hours. “The visibility dropped below 50 metre at 5 am. It was at 10 am the visibility became 50 metre,” said a senior officer at the Delhi airport. In fact, the visibility at airport started decreasing swiftly much earlier. 

Low Visibility Procedures (LVP) was pressed into service at 11.34 pm when visibility dropped below 350 m. During this LVP condition, three incoming flights were diverted to neighboring airports as landing was not possible due to low visibility. The airport officers had to cancel 24 flights and 38 flights were delayed. The travelers were stranded at the airport terminals due to rescheduling of the flights and several rushed for new tickets to reach their destinations. 

Not only the fliers but thousands of people were affected after a dense fog in parts of northern India on Wednesday forced authorities to cancel seven trains and reschedule 19 while 70 ran behind schedule. “A total of seven trains to and from Delhi were cancelled and seven delayed beyond 10 to over 24 hours,” said spokesperson of Northern Railway. The morning road traffic was also very slow in the city due to dense fog. 

The weathermen at Regional Meteorological Centre in the city have predicted dense to very dense fog on Thursday morning as well. “The maximum and minimum temperatures are likely to hover around 26 and 11 degree Celsius respectively,” predicted a senior officer at MeT. 

Meanwhile, advisories suggesting people to avoid outdoors are in place yet again with the air quality in the national Capital turning ‘severe’ under the collective impact of dense fog and reduced wind speed, a condition that is likely to persist over the next few days.

Visibility will drop across the city over the next few days due to dense fog formation, which shoots up the level of pollutants as moisture traps it, an IMD official said.

Levels of PM 10, in real-time, at Delhi Pollution Control Committee’s (DPCC) Anand Vihar and R K Puram stations violated the prescribed standards (24-hour ambient) by over 10 and seven times respectively around 7 pm.