Lucknow: Flights delayed as Airport Radar Develops Technical Glitch

Lucknow: All flights to Chowdhary Charan Singh International Airport here were suspended on Saturday after a radar facilitating take off and landing of aircraft developed a technical snag, stranding several passengers.

An airport official said that a DVOR (Doppler Very High Omni Range) radar suddenly shut down leading to complete chaos at the airport. Because of the technical snag no planes were able to land or take off after 4.30 p.m.

"Important radio equipment at the airport developed a problem at around 4:30 this evening following which the movement of flights has been adversely hit," Sanjay Narain, OSD to the airport director, said.

Because of this problem, some 20 flights have been affected as per the schedule although the flights which had already landed have been allowed to leave through alternative arrangements, he said.

Airport authorities have suspended flight operations till January 16. All flights to and from the airport have been either diverted or cancelled.

DVOR is used for precision landing. While visual landings are possible but that is dependent on visibility levels. With foggy conditions common during winter, the airport does not want to take chances.

Airport director P.K. Srivastava said technicians were attending to the major technical fault but didn't not give any time frame for how long it will take to fix the problem. Other airport officials said it could take up to two days.

Meanwhile, the incident has inconvenienced a lot of people who reached the airport to take a flight, only to find they could not.

"We dont know till we got here that the flights are delayed. Authorities need to do something about for this. There are people here who have weddings to attend, have important work or are patients who need to go," said one passenger.

Another angry passenger said that the authorities needed to make some arrangement for people stranded at the airport. "We are standing here for hours and now they are telling us that you will get a ticket for a flight which is 10 days later.There is no information.They are not even giving tickets from Delhi," the passenger said.

"Nobody from any airline or airport authority is ready to respond to us," another passenger added.

The development is set to create a lot of problems to fliers between Lucknow-Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and some other international routes like Thailand and Singapore.

(with agency inputs)