Airport resumes ops after 21 hours with 149 flights
Times of India | 28 May 2024
Kolkata: Kolkata airport resumed flight operations around 9 am on Monday after a 21-hour closure from Sunday noon to avoid the fury of cyclone Remal. But the tail of the cyclone lashed the airport in the afternoon, churning up crosswinds that forced flight arrivals to be suspended for a couple of hours. Scores of flights, both arriving and departing, were delayed during this period.Altogether, 12 flights had to be diverted to other airports while three flights did a go-around after being unable to land. Only 149 flights were operated from Kolkata airport on Monday, against 384 on the same day last week (May 20).
The airport staff managed to clear the waterlogging by 8.30am. Many passengers felt the closure could perhaps have been done a few hours later from 5pm. But, given the Met office warnings of high velocity winds in the approach path and wary of what had happened on a Singapore Airlines flight over Myanmar, Kolkata airport authorities decided to shut down at noon when weather was still good.
Flights resumed on time with the IndiGo flight to Port Blair the first to take off at 8.59am. An IndiGo flight from Guhawati was the first to touch down in Kolkata at 9.50am. Initially, some departing flights reported no-shows with some passengers stuck in inundated streets en-route to the airport.
The situation changed dramatically around noon when the weather turned foul and the wind picked up speed. Someflights had to be diverted to Bhubaneswar, Ranchi, Guwahati, Varanasi and Gaya.
Many departing flights were also held up on the tarmac after passengers had boarded. Irked over the delay, passengers like one Santosh Narayan, took to X for raising his concern. In response, the airline pacified the passengers by expressing regret and explaining the weather situation on social media.
A total of 10 flights scheduled for Kolkata from Guwahati were cancelled. Flights were cancelled from multiple other cities like Bangalore and Port Blair as well. Over 200 Kolkata-bound passengers were stranded in Port Blair, claimed one Arun Venkatesh Babu on X.
In Kolkata, Mourya Mullick (26), who had arrived from Bangalore on Monday morning, said he waited for two hours to get a cab to reach his home in New Town.