New Delhi: A cloudburst followed by heavy
rains hit air traffic movement at the Delhi airport this
afternoon with at least one flight diverted and four others
asked to make a `go-around`.
The MeT office said it was one of the heaviest and
"unprecedented" downpour of this season, with 117 mm recorded
within an hour which could completely submerge any low-lying
airport like Mumbai.
Water-logging on the arrival side of the IGI Airport
inconvenienced passengers which led the airport operator to
arrange the delivery of their baggages on the conveyor belts
at the international side as a precautionary measure, a DIAL
spokesperson said.
A Jet Airways flight, 9W-2632, was made to `go-around` at
1449 hours. But as it was still unable to land due to the
heavy downpour, it was finally diverted to Jaipur at 1515
hours, the spokesperson said.
Four flights of IndiGo, JetLite, Kingfisher and Air
India, which were scheduled to land between 1415 and 1515
hours, were made to do a `go around` due to the heavy rains.
The rains led to clogging and overflowing of the drains
adjoining the arrival forecourt of Terminal 3, with the excess
water spilling into the domestic arrival area. DIAL`s
engineering team was deployed in the affected areas to restore
normal operations.
After the heavy rains, the operations on the airside were
normal, the spokesperson said, adding that the runways were
fully operational and all flights were landing and taking off
normally.
PTI
