Dust storm in Delhi hits flight schedule in Chennai airport

The aviation service at the Indira Gandhi international airport in Delhi was hit, with most of the flights being diverted to other airports apart from the delays recorded by dozens of airlines.

The cascading effect of the disruption in service was felt in Chennai as well. Several flights that were to arrive from Delhi had to be cancelled, while the remaining landed after a considerable delay. It was the passengers who were hit the worst due to this large-scale disruption. Many of them alleged that they were not intimated about the cancellation or hours-long delays in flight operation.

Lending credence to the complaint, the display board inside the airport continued to show that all flights would arrive at the schedule time itself, leading to confusion among passengers.

In all, three flights to Delhi and two flights that were scheduled to arrive from Delhi were cancelled.

Equally troublesome for the travellers was the hours-long delay report by some of the flights. An Indigo airlines flight to Singapore, which was scheduled to depart at 10 pm, took off only at 2 am.

Similarly, an Air India flight to New York via Delhi, which was scheduled at 9 pm, left here only at 10.30 am on Monday.

Besides the flights to Delhi, several flights to Ahmedabad, Pune, Kozhikode and Mumbai, too, were delayed by as much as five hours.

“We did not get any information regarding the delay from the airlines staff, so we could not display the correct schedule of flights,” said an airport official.