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29 March 2024

Gulf flights to Kochi diverted again

Published
By Joseph George

Flights from Gulf continues to be diverted away from the Kochi international airport fog and poor visibility disrupted schedules for the third week in a row.

While five international flights were diverted earlier this morning, last week another six were diverted to nearby airports and many more during the middle of November.

According to airport officials the visibility levels dropped to less than 600 metres, which led to the disruptions.

Among the flights that were diverted today are that of Emirates, Etihad, Air Arabia and Air India.

Emirates Fight scheduled to reach the airport at 3.20am from Dubai was diverted to Thiruvananthapuram and later returned to Kochi at 7.20am.

Etihad Airlines Flight from Abu Dhabi, scheduled to reach at 3.25am, was also diverted to Thiruvananthapuram. Another Gulf Air flight from Bahrain was diverted to Chennai.

Other flights including an Air Arabia flight from Sharjah and Air India flight arriving from Riyad via Mumbai was diverted to Kozhikode.

Last week another half a dozen flights including those from Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai that were scheduled to land at Kochi were diverted to Chennai following thick fog. It later returned to Kochi after the fog cleared.

Meanwhile efforts are on to improve the conditions at the airport. Earlier this week it was announced that a new radar will be installed at the airport within three months in an effort to improve safe and speedy operation of aircraft.

The radar is expected to be fully operational by the next winter and will reduce the procedural landing of aircraft from seven to three minutes.

An Automatic visual range (AVR) equipment will be installed to enable the Air Traffic Control to get automatically recorded visibility distance.