Flight operations at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport remained severely disrupted on Saturday as the impact of Friday evening’s intense thunderstorm compounded ongoing problems caused by a runway closure that began earlier this week.
According to flight tracking data from Flightradar24, at least 498 flights were delayed on Saturday till 7.20pm. An airport official confirmed that over 40 flights had been diverted since Friday evening and more than 300 flights were delayed.
The already challenging situation at the airport has been exacerbated by the planned closure of Runway 28/10 since April 9 for maintenance work. The airport operator had announced in February that the runway would be non-operational from April due to an upgrade to the Instrument Landing System (ILS). While this upgrade will eventually allow flights to operate in low-visibility conditions—a common issue during Delhi’s winter fog, authorities and operators appear to have been unprepared to account for the challenges in running curtailed operations.
Social media platforms were flooded with complaints from frustrated passengers facing long delays, poor communication, and various inconveniences.
“20 min dust storm in Delhi, there’s chaos everywhere. Because the airlines don’t have a system of contingency planning… zero support, communication, basic facilities, nothing… It took 15 hours to retrieve my baggage,” one user wrote.
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Another passenger tagged Air India and wrote: “…flight departed 12 hours late. There was no support from your side at Delhi Airport, all your higher authority was sleeping peacefully when we were suffering. Delay was due to total mismanagement of Air India.”
Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) were hit by gusty winds exceeding 80 km/hr on Friday evening as an intense thunderstorm wreaked havoc, causing widespread damage. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) had initially issued a yellow alert for Saturday as well, forecasting light rain with thunderstorm and lightning, but withdrew it in the latter half of the day.
At 5pm on Saturday, Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) posted on X: “Flight operations at Delhi Airport are normal, but some airlines are still affected by last night’s weather conditions. Our teams are working hard to minimise inconvenience,” and advised all flyers to check their flight status regularly for updates.
The spill-over effects appear to have persisted longer than they should have due to the runway closure. India’s busiest air terminal, Delhi is handling approximately 200 fewer flights daily since April 9 when runway 28/10 was closed for upgrades.
Aviation expert Capt. Mohan Ranganathan criticised airlines for not make adequate adjustments to account for the limited operations due to the planned runway closure. “The airlines should have ideally planned a reduced number of flight operations per day when they were informed about the unavailability of one of the major runways. However, doing so would affect their revenue. Sadly, they prefer their convenience over passenger convenience.”
Mark D Martin of Martin Consulting said the Delhi airport should have been the least affected by the closure of one runway, as it still has three others available. “The airlines seem to have not planned for the runway unavailability well,” he said.
A former airport official, requesting anonymity, explained that multiple factors contributed to the delays: “Runway 29/10 is geographically located in the middle of the airfield, which increases the time taken for aircraft to taxi. This leads to cascading delays. For instance, if an arriving aircraft lands on a runway farther from the terminal than the one currently closed, the taxi time increases. Consequently, passenger disembarkation is delayed, cleaning staff boards the aircraft later than scheduled, and the boarding of passengers for the next sector is also delayed. As a result, ground operations are severely impacted in such situations.”
While the airlines HT spoke to claimed they were working closely with the airport operator, the Airports Authority of India, and the IMD, no airline has announced any planned or advance cancellations of flights, suggesting airlines are attempting to operate all scheduled flights despite the challenging circumstances.
An airline official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that all airlines were collectively working to minimise passenger inconvenience. “Real time monitoring of flights, coordinating with stakeholders and keeping the passengers updated are some of the work that has been done from the first day of the planned maintenance leading to the runway shutdown,” he said.
An official close to the development added, “Air India flights were impacted severely on Saturday morning as well. There was a bit of congestion at the airport as several flights had been disrupted since Friday evening. Operations were mostly normal after 10 am.”
