Indians enraged by airport chaos after fog prevents flights

India’s agency that makes rules for flying, told airlines to pay attention after many people went on social media to say their flights were late or cancelled.

The government has told airlines to cancel flights early and let passengers know about any delays as they happen.

Airlines say the fog in Delhi caused a lot of problems.

Angry travelers say airlines and airports are not giving enough information.

A man was taken by the police because he was accused of hurting a co-pilot at IndiGo airlines. Later on, he was let go after paying bail. The man’s plane was late for more than 10 hours on Sunday. A popular video showed a passenger attacking the co-pilot while he was talking on the plane.

In another video, people were seen eating food while waiting on the runway at the Mumbai airport. Their flight from Goa to Delhi was redirected there after being delayed for a long time.

Many flights in Delhi have been late since Sunday because of heavy fog. Delhi has one of India’s busiest airports. It is also the main place where big airlines like IndiGo and Air India operate from.

Every year, there is fog at the Delhi airport. But this year, it’s worse because of other problems like not enough parking for planes and a runway closed for maintenance.


The problem got worse on Sunday, and now it’s causing more problems on Monday. It will probably still be a problem on Tuesday too.

The weather department says that there will be thick fog in Delhi and other northern cities for two more days. Some trains are running late.

Since Sunday, many passengers complained about their flights being late. They told the federal aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and different airlines about it on X (formerly Twitter). Some people said they had to sit on planes without food and water because they didn’t know when the planes were going to leave.

On Monday afternoon, Mr Scindia talked about the confusion in a long post on X, saying that the heavy fog in Delhi on Sunday was very unusual.

“Visibility changed a lot for a few hours, and sometimes it was zero between 5am and 9am. ” The officials had to shut down operations for a while, even on runways that can handle low visibility. They asked the Delhi airport to start using the fourth runway that can handle low visibility.

Mr Scindia also said that bad behavior is not okay and will be handled by the law.

IndiGo said in a statement that it had reported the attack on its staff member to its own internal committee for “appropriate action”.

Most of the complaints were from people flying with IndiGo, which is the biggest airline in India in terms of passengers and planes. The airline said sorry for the trouble it caused customers in a statement on Monday.

“Because of heavy fog, cancellations and delays caused problems throughout the day, which affected operations even more,” it said.

Some leaders from opposing parties like Pawan Khera from Congress and Saket Gokhale from Trinamool Congress, said bad things about the aviation minister and the regulator for not doing their jobs well.

MrGokhale wants the government to investigate what went wrong with IndiGo on Saturday and Sunday. He says it’s not just because of the fog in northern India.

“He said there are scary stories about travelers from other parts of India who had the same issues. ”

Some famous people from Bollywood caused trouble.

Actor Ranvir Shorey shared on social media that his IndiGo flight was very late, causing him a lot of trouble because he needed to get home to his son. He said he would report IndiGo to the authorities.

Actress Radhika Apte said she and other people were stuck in a hallway at the airport for a long time because their flight was delayed. They didn’t have access to water or toilets.