Indian prepared but private airlines lost in capital fog

BITTEN BY THE COLD: It was an encore of many previous winters at the airport.

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New Delhi: Two-year-old Jia is restless and angry and her mother Ruchi is running out of patience.

The family's Christmas vacation to Goa has been thrown completely off schedule by the delay in their flight. And the worst part, they say, is that nobody from their airline had even bothered to warn them.

“It’s so difficult with the family. No one told us about the delay and we have been waiting,” says Ruchi Jain.

It was an encore of many previous winters at the airport. Despite warnings from the Civil Aviation Ministry, private airlines have been caught on the back foot again.

Almost none of the private airlines have pilots trained to use the CAT 3 B system installed at Delhi airport, which helps planes to land even when the visibility is a dismal 50 metres. Result: passengers are paying the price.

“This is a connecting flight. I may miss my flight to Australia tomorrow,” complained another passenger.

Runway visibility returned to normal by noon but the backlog of flight delays was so heavy that that it took until evening for air traffic to go back to normal.

The only fortunate passengers were the ones booked on Indian, the Government airline, which has CAT 3B trained pilots.

So if the chaos at the Delhi airport on Friday is an indicator of things to come, all you passengers who are planning to travel over the next few weeks, be prepared for a long wait.

(With inputs from Raheel Khursheed)