Eighteen flights were diverted while more than 27 were cancelled even as the fog cabin and waiting lounges overflowed with passengers. Another 250 were delayed by between an hour to six hours. Of the 18 diverted flights, 13 were domestic. Jaipur airport bore the brunt with six flights diverted there.

Neither the airlines nor the airport were prepared for the situation at hand. During the five hours when fog set in, only one CAT III B landing took place and only two CAT-I operations were carried out.

The 9.30 am Indian Airlines flight coming from Hyderabad was the CAT-III B landing. “For CAT III operations, both the pilot and the co-pilot have to be trained at the same level. During peak winters we normally schedule our pilots in such a way that the right combination is available to fly in and out of all major airports. But since the peak time was over, none of the airlines were ready with the right combination of pilots,” said a senior Indian Airlines officials.

Visibility dipped below 50 m for more than an hour between 6.45 am and 8 am, when even the CAT-III B could not have worked. At the peak time of 9 am, the runway visibility touched its lowest at 75 m.

The unexpected fog also led to confusion at airside with several flights waiting on the tarmac for “start-up” clearance from the ATC for nearly 1-2 hours. A morning Jetlite flight to Lucknow had to wait at the apron area for nearly 2 hours and ten minutes before it was given a go ahead. Several flights had to return to the apron area from the runway. “The visibility had dipped suddenly at 5.55 am and then it suddenly improved after 11 am. So every one asked for start up clearance simultaneously, which led to confusion,” said a Jetlite official.

Conditions at Delhi were also affected by low visibility at Allahabad, Srinagar, Jammu and Varanasi airports. No domestic flight arrived between 5.30 and 9.30 am, while no domestic flight took off between 6.15 and 9.50 am. All flights till 5.30 in the evening were delayed from an hour to over six hours.

For travellers this translated into several hours of waiting. “Airlines just don’t bother informing us about delays. We received a message from Air Deccan officials around 4 am that we should come to the airport two hours before our flight time of 6.55 am, as the visibility was declining,” said K K Sharma, a defense ministry official, who was going for an audit at the Jabalpur Ordnance factory. Even though Sharma and his team reached the airport at 5.30 am they finally came to know around 9 am that their flight had been cancelled.

P Dorje, travelling to Leh by a Air Deccan flight, also had to go through a similar experience. He reached the airport at 4.30 am with his two-year-old son, 78-year-old mother and four other family members for the 7.30 am flight. “I spent so much money in hiring two taxis. At 4.30 this morning they said the flight was on time but finally cancelled it around 9.30 am,” he said.