Fog, snag hit 24 flights from Amritsar's Sri Guru Ram Das Ji International Airport

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, December 16

At least 24 international and domestic flights from Sri Guru Ram Das Ji International Airport here were either diverted or cancelled during the past 24 hours due to heavy fog in the region.

Airport officials said the flights had to be cancelled or diverted due to a technical snag in the runway visibility range (RVR) equipment. However, due to sudden positive change in the weather conditions on Thursday evening, the air traffic was resumed to near normal, they said.

Everything depends upon the weather as the snag in the RVR system is yet to be corrected. VK Seth, director airport, said, “They are still waiting for the required equipment to arrive, after which the problem would be completely resolved.” He added that CAT-II and CAT-III systems were defunct at the present and they only had CAT-I system functional.

Meanwhile, passengers faced heavy inconvenience as their flights did not reach the desired destinations. While several of them were off boarded at New Delhi, others had to wait for resumption of normal air traffic.

They complained that the airport authorities had no system in place to provide comfort, alternate travel arrangements or other facilities to the passengers who had faced difficulties due to an administrative fault on part of the airport authorities.