Delhi Fog: Weather agencies have predicted improvement in air quality from today. (File photo)
Dense fog disrupted transport services in and around the national capital Wednesday morning resulting in the delay of flights and trains. Over 59 trains were delayed, 13 rescheduled and 21 cancelled due to fog and other operational reasons.
The government has said that it is monitoring the situation and trying to bring some improvement in the system performance after flight operations at the Indira Gandhi International Airport also went for a toss.
"Really sorry for all the delays and inconvenience caused. We have been continuously monitoring the situation and trying to improve the system performance," junior civil aviation minister Jayant Sinha said in a tweet yesterday.
His remarks came after in response to a tweet by Sanjiv Kapoor, the Chief Strategy and Commercial officer of Tata-SIA run Vistara airline, on the "terrible" flight delays at the Delhi airport.
"Dear Mr Sinha-Terrible delays yesterday and the day before due to fog on DEL. Entire system thrown out of whack," Mr Kapoor had tweeted earlier.
Pollution levels in the capital added to low visibility. However, weather agencies have predicted improvement in air quality from today but added there would not be any major improvement as the air quality would remain toxic under "very poor" category.
"The pollution level in the capital which was mostly in 'very poor' category for the past two weeks is now at 'severe' category only until January 2, 2018. It will slip back to 'very poor' from January 3 onwards," System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research or SAFAR told news agency IANS.
The India Meteorological department or IMD has predicted slight increase in wind speed which is crucial to dissolve effluents in the air to improve quality and visibility.
Over sixty flights from the Delhi airport had been delayed due to low visibility because of the fog Tuesday morning while six had been cancelled. Nearly 40 domestic and 26 international flights were among those delayed.
On the first day of 2018, 500 flights were delayed and more than 20 cancelled at the Indira Gandhi International airport.
According to SAFAR, the Air Quality Index during the period December 25, 2017 to January 3, 2018 remained over 50 notch points higher as compared to the past two years, making it worse in three years.
(With inputs from agencies)