Trains cancelled, air traffic disrupted

A release from the Southern Railways said three Shatabdi Expresses were cancelled. These include the Jan Shatabdi Expresses from Chennai to Vijayawada and the Vijayawada-Chennai Central Jan Shatabdi Express. The popular Brindavan Express was also cancelled.

Railway tracks at the Park Town, Fort, Beach stations were water-logged and as a result, the EMU services were hit. From Friday morning, the railway staff were engaged in clearing the tracks. However, as the work could not be finished in time, some services on the Tambaram-Beach and Central-Aakkonam and Gummidipoondi were cancelled.

Flight services hit

The murky weather also affected the schedule of flights from the domestic as well as international terminals in Chennai airport on Friday.

Airport authorities said all four flights on the Chennai-Tuticorin sector had to be cancelled, two from here and two from there due to poor visibility in Tuticorin. About 40 passengers, who were to board the flight to Tuticorin at 1040 hrs, could not do so, following cancellation of the service. Some of them returned home taking refund while a few other took a connecting flight to Madurai and reached Tuticorin.

As many as 26 arrivals, including domestic and international routes were delayed by an hour due to the bad weather. The arrivals included flights from Sri Lanka, Sharjah, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

Some flights on the domestic sector were delayed due to the fact that passengers as well as the crew could not reach the airport on time due to bad disruption of traffic following heavy inundation of even arterial roads in Chennai city, the authorities explained.

“We have also kept the safety of passengers in mind in view of poor visibility and flooding of the runway although it is our duty to operate flights on time” the authorities added.