Delhi airport today: Flights disrupted after dust storm with 100 kmph wind speed hits city; more mayhem likely today

Delhi airport today: A massive dust storm hit the capital on Sunday evening that affected flight operations at the IGI airport. Delhi flights today are on schedule so far, but later on, the IMD forecast says things may change for the worse as another thunderstorm is expected to hit the region. The wind speed during the dust storm exceeded 100 kmph and it brought operations at the IGI airport to a halt. During the crucial evening rush hours, as many as 70 flights were diverted to other nearby airports.

The storm lasted for almost 3 hours and the operations had to be shut down for that period, Air Traffic Control (ATC) sources at the airport revealed. Reportedly, the disruptions were very severe and the authorities were caught by surprise. "The situation is slightly unique, the disruptions are mostly on account of wind shear... The number of diversions are now touching 70," sources at the airport had then said to PTI. And what is wind shear? It is a rapid change in winds over a short horizontal distance experienced by aircraft. This can cause a rapid change in lift, and thus the altitude, of the aircraft. Wind shear is an extremely dangerous situation that has caused aircraft to crash on previous occasions at other airports. However, authorities got the air traffic operations back to near normal by 9 pm.  

To ensure that their passengers were not too inconvenienced, airlines took to the Twitter to announce the delays. Vistara, in its post said that its flight operations were expected to normalise by 2 am even as it was forced to announce the cancellation of one its flights from Bhubaneshwar, which was diverted to Jaipur. It did announce some welcome relief and said, "Due to severe weather that impacted Delhi, over 70 flights across multiple airlines were diverted and many more delayed and cancelled. As this may have resulted in you (passengers) having to change your travel plans, we are waiving change/cancellation fee for all customers booked to or from Delhi on May 13 and 14, who wish to no longer travel or wish reschedule their booking for a different date. However, fare difference, if any, for flights on a different date will be payable."

However, its forecast for Monday was not very good. It said, "All efforts are underway to recover from disruptions and manage the situation at the earliest but consequential disruptions are likely to occur tomorrow as some aircraft and crew are held up at some locations due to flight diversions." It has emerged that Vistara has cancelled as many as 8 flights so far. The passengers who suffered were mostly directed towards Jaipur, Amritsar and Lucknow. 

Not just domestic flights, International ones too were disrupted. Delays hit flights from Kathmandu, Riyadh, Colombo, Jeddah, Kabul. Flights from Tokyo, Newark and Colombo were diverted to other places. As many as 10 international flights were diverted to Lucknow after not getting permission to land due to severe weather conditions.

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The final count of flight diversions and cancellations is still to be revealed.