Flyers and airline crew reach airport late (Times of India 09 September 2011)

NEW DELHI: Traffic jams across the city following Friday's heavy downpour affected airline schedules and flyers alike. Many passengers couldn't make it to the IGI Airport on time and missed their flights. Several crew members of different airlines were also caught in traffic jams, which resulted in flight delays of 10 to 20 minutes.

"My friend had to catch a flight to Mumbai around 11am and set out from his home in Nirman Vihar; but when he saw that there was no way he could make it on time by road, he boarded the IGI Metro at 10am. This didn't help as he reached terminal 3 at 10.30pm and was refused a boarding pass. After hearing his story, I left home for the airport at 10.30 as I, too, had a flight to catch at 2pm. But still, I reached only a few minutes before 2pm and missed my flight," said Tarun Mehta, a businessman.
The airport recorded 64.3mm rain overnight and another 3.6mm rain through the day. Director in-charge of IGI Met, RK Jenamani, said that visibility fell twice: once between 5am and 8am when it went down to 800m, and again in the afternoon when it reached 1,500m.
"Palam and Gurgaon Road saw very heavy rain. There were periods since Thursday night when the airport witnessed rain, strong winds and CV clouds because of which aircraft might have faced some problems," he said.

Airport sources said that for a large part of the day, mixed operations had to be suspended and the main and new runways were used for segregated operations. "The new runway was used for arrivals and the main runway was used for departures. Since wind direction had changed, the arrivals were from the Dwarka side. This led to a slight delay in all operations. Aircraft were also getting deviated from their set routes due to strong winds," said an official.

Sources said there was waterlogging in several patches in and around the airport. With the new tunnel road leading to terminal 3 waterlogged for several hours, passengers who finally managed to get to the airport and were using that route had to turn back and go via the main highway because of which they got stuck in another jam. Sources said that for over two hours, only one side of the tunnel road could be used and all incoming traffic had to be stopped.