Bad weather conditions and poor visibility hampered flight movement to and from Biju Patnaik International Airport of Bhubaneswar on Wednesday with two flights including an international flight being diverted to other airports, officials said.
This included Indigo’s Singapore-Bhubaneswar flight, carrying 63 passengers and another flight of the same airline that came from Delhi.
While the Singapore-Bhubaneswar flight was diverted to Shamshabad Airport, the Delhi-Bhubaneswar flight was diverted to Kolkata, airport officials said.
The latter flight returned to Bhubaneswar after the visibility improved later in the day. The first flight however remained grounded at Shamshabad airport, with passengers awaiting further instructions, they added.
Airport director Prasanna Pradhan said that the Runway Visual Range (RVR) was limited to 150 metres due to fog, due to which the flights were diverted.
Pradhan further said that at around 8 am today, after an hour of disruption, visibility began to improve, reaching 350 metres with an RVR of 600 metres. Subsequently, flight operations resumed, he added.
Meanwhile, the Meteorological Centre in Bhubaneswar predicted that shallow to moderate fog is very likely to occur at a few places over the districts of Coastal Odisha and North Interior Odisha, and at one or two places over the districts of South Interior Odisha on Wednesday.
Also, the meteorological centre said that dry weather is likely to prevail over the districts of Odisha for the next seven days. (ANI)