32 flights affected as heavy rain lashes Chennai
Officials said as many as 17 flights could not land on time, some of them diverted, and 15 others had to wait before take off due to heavy showers in Chennai and suburbs
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CHENNAI: The sudden, heavy showers that lashed Chennai on Friday night severely disrupted flight service to and from the city airport, which hit thousands of air passengers.
The arrival or departure of as many as 32 flights were affected by the rain, thunder, lightning and strong winds, said officials at the Chennai airport.
Chennai and its suburbs recorded heavy rain accompanied by wind and thunder from 7.30 pm to 10 pm on Friday. Due to this, flights coming from Visakhapatnam, Madurai, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Lucknow, and Dhaka had to hover for a long time.
Of them, the flights from Visakhapatnam, Coimbatore, and Delhi flights began running low on fuel, which prompted the authorities to decide that it was better to divert them than to wait any longer.
The pilots of these flights were asked to head to Bengaluru airport. The flight from Madurai was sent to Tiruchy airport.
Apart from these four flights, the others continued circling the sky. Finally, after the rain subsided, they landed one after the other.
It was not just the arrivals that were hit by poor weather on Friday night. Fifteen flights from Chennai, including those from Delhi, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Singapore, Kuwait, and Dubai, which were supposed to take off from Chennai, had to wait for up to two hours to take off.
The disruption in services that affected 32 flights affected a large number of passengers.
