Over 7 Flights Cancelled in Northeast Due to Poor Visibility, Air Traffic Affected

With visibility getting poor in the Northeast due to bad weather conditions, a minimum of seven flights were cancelled from operating, an official of Airports Authority of India revealed on Wednesday. The list included flights that were operating on Guwahati to Tezu and Tezu to Guwahati route. They aborted operations considering the bad weather, and low visibility engulfing the sky over the capital city. "The Tezu-Imphal flight was cancelled due to poor visibility. All these three flights are operated by FlyBig airlines," he said. Due to bad weather, Tezpur-Guwahati and Guwahati-Tezpur services by Pawan Hans were cancelled, the official said.

"The Guwahati-Dimapur-Imphal and the return Imphal-Dimapur-Guwahati flight of Alliance Air were also cancelled during the day," he said. Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) scientist Sanjay O'neil Shaw said the weather conditions and visibility are likely to improve over the next 2-3 days. "There will be generally cloudy sky in Guwahati with the expectation of light rain or drizzle on Thursday. It will be similar on Friday as well," he added. 

An official of AAI, which controls the Air Traffic Control (ATC) in Guwahati, said the minimum visibility required to land a flight at the airport is 1,300 metres, while it is 300-350 metres for take-off. Also, a total of eight flights scheduled to land at the Goa International Airport at Dabolim were diverted on Wednesday morning due to visibility issues, an official said.

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More than 20 flights were delayed due to poor visibility, he added. Diverted flights later "landed back at the Goa International Airport, Dabolim," the airport authority said in a statement. The flights which were diverted included an Oman Air flight which was taken to Mumbai. It was supposed to arrive at 2.35 am, the official said. Go First flight G8-575 and Air India flight AI-685 were diverted to Mumbai. Air Asia's flight I5-818 and IndiGo's flight 6E-743 were diverted to Hyderabad while the Air Asia's Delhi Goa flight I5-779 was diverted to Bengaluru. IndiGo flights from Cochin and Bengaluru were also asked to head to Mumbai till visibility improved at Goa.

With inputs from PTI