KOLKATA:CM Mamata Banerjee’s chartered plane was forced to hover over Kolkata for more than an hour before it made a safe landing as a squall accompanied by hailstorm made flight operations treacherous. Sixteen other flights were delayed and one had to be diverted during the disruption that lasted for nearly an hour.The French-built longrange business jet Dassault Falcon 2000, which the CM was using, took off from the Andal airport near Durgapur at 3.39pm after she addressed two election meetings in West Burdwan. The short flight’s estimated time of arrival in Kolkata was 4.07pm.But, as the flight approached Kolkata, the sky over North 24 Parganas (including the region around the airport) suddenly darkened and the on-board weather radar warned of a localised thunderstorm developing fast. The meteorological office at the airport issued a warning at 3.55pm and, as the wind picked up speed and the rain — accompanied by a hailstorm — intensified, it looked ominous.
Flight operations were suspended at the airport shortly after an IndiGo flight from Bhubaneswar touched down at 4.22pm and, by 4.45pm, when a 57 kmph squall hit the airport, visibility was down to 800 metres.“It was a sudden local disturbance that developed from Jharkhand. It has happened earlier but not this intense,” airport meteorological office head G K Das said.The CM’s flight, meanwhile, continued hovering above — biding time for the conditions to improve — as the storm lashed the airport and neighbouring Rajarhat, Salt Lake, Birati and Madhyamgram. Nabanna officials kept in touch with the airport all through, monitoring the situation. Air Traffic Control officials said they were in constant communication with the pilot of the CM’s flight as well as they waited for a window to bring the aircraft in.The improvement of the weather at 5 pm was as sudden as the onset of the storm. But the touchdown of the CM’s flight was delayed further after a Mumbai-bound IndiGo flight’s pilot radioed the ATC of a strong tail wind during take-off. This plane took off from the Rajarhat end at 5:02 pm almost immediately after the flight suspension was withdrawn but the pilot’s message to the ATC followed soon after.The ATC, alarmed by the sudden change in wind direction, put the CM’s flight on hold and quickly changed its touchdown runway from 19L to 01R (so, instead of landing from the Madhyamgram side, the plane was brought in from the Rajarhat side). The aircraft finally touched down safely at 5.19 pm, 72 minutes behind schedule.“The CM’s flight would have landed 10 minutes earlier had the change of runway not been necessitated by the sudden change in wind direction,” an airport official said. Subsequently, flights continued to operate on runway 01R.Air traffic controllers said it was the pilot’s discretion when he wanted to approach for landing. “Bigger Airbus and Boeing aircraft landed till 4.22 pm but that was not possible for the Dassault Falcon, a much smaller aircraft,” an official said.At least 16 other aircraft were on hold during the storm and, even after the CM’s flight had landed, operations continued to be disrupted by strong winds. A SpiceJet flight arriving from Mumbai had to divert to Varanasi.
