Delays made December the worst month for fliers

NEWDELHI:The Capital’s air travellers faced maximum flight disruptions in December with least number of domestic flights making it on time. This has been revealed in an annual report by theairportoperator DIALonthe On-Time Performance (OTP) of domestic airlines. According to the report, 79% flights were delayed due to ‘reactionary reasons’ or late arrivals while only 13% were delayed due to weather conditions like fog.

Over 1,200 flights operate daily from Delhi airport, out of which 60% are domestic flights

Last month, the operator had prepared a report on the flight operations from November 30 to December 3 when over 900 flight were disrupted. Hindustan Times had reported on December 14 that airlines, and not fog, were largely to blame for the disruptions.

“In December, only 64% of the departing flights operated on time. Spicejet‘s OTP was highest at 70%. The average OTP of arriving flights was 54%, second worst after June, when it was 29.28%. The other reasons for delay include passenger and baggage handling, aircraft and ramp handling, technical, automated equipment operations and air traffic flow management,” an airport official said. If a flight departs 15 minutes after the scheduled time, it is considered delayed.

The Indira Gandhi International Airport, which recorded 55 million passengers last year, has a long runway and equipment to assist instrument landing systems in extreme low visibility. In foggy conditions, airports and aircraft use sophisticated landing systems with pilots trained to deal with low visibility, technically known as Category-III, which has three classifications.However, the airport operator’s reports have revealed that airlines are not prepared to land in low visibility. “There have been instances where airlines were found using CAT-III non-compliant planes for flights to Delhi during dense fog,” a DGCA official said.

A Spicejet spokesperson said that airline has been consistently toppingtheOTPchartsinthemetros for the past three months in a row. The airlines, however, have beencontestingtheauthenticityof OTPdata.BothIndigoandSpicejet haveapproachedDGCAtoinvestigatethemannerinwhichtheOTP data is collected at different airports. Meanwhile,reactingtothe OTP report about “reactionary delays” Indigo airlines said, “Theseareduetothelateincoming aircraftfromotherstationswhere visibility is down and there are no modern landing systems to allow lowvisibilityoperations—suchas Chandigarh, Gauhati, Imphal, Bengaluru, Srinagar, Jammu — as well as late incoming aircraft that toucheshighlycongestedairspace such as over Mumbai and Goa.”

In 2015, January was the worst month for passengers with only 57% flights departing on time from Delhi, while in December, 77% flights departed on time.