All departures at Delhi airport resumed at 9.16 am on Tuesday after a brief halt due to poor visibility. Flight operations were put on hold for nearly two hours as dense fog covered the runways. According to news agency ANI, the services remained suspended between 7.15 am and 9:16 am.

Also, three international and one domestic flight were diverted due to a dip in the visibility, a PTI report said. It, however, added arrivals were not stopped as visibility was above 50 metres.

The Indira Gandhi International Airport is the busiest in the country and on an average sees more than 70 flight movements per hour. This includes both arrivals and departures.

The dense fog condition in Palam area of the national has led to poor visibility on the runway, forcing officials to halt the operations. A minimum visibility of 125 metres is needed for flight operations.

Meanwhile, the air quality index of Delhi continues to remain in ‘severe’ category with PM 2.5 level recorded above the statndards. At 8 am on December 25, AQI at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium was 451.

The capital on Sunday recorded its coldest December temperature in the past 12 years with mercury dipping to 3.7 degrees Celsius, as a moderate cover of fog surrounded the city dropping visibility. On Monday, several parts of the northern India witnesses dense fog. A major accident on the Rohatk-Rewari highway due to the fog jilled eight people on Monday.

However, a new technology is going to be deployed soon to tackle the problem. The Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) system, in use in nine countries and being introduced in India for the first time, will provide information to airlines at the place of origin of a flight about the status of fog and congestion in Delhi so that they can plan their flights to the national capital accordingly. In case of fog at Delhi airport, the status would be conveyed well in advance to the aircraft at the place of their origin itself, asking them to delay departure.

With this system in place, passengers flying into Delhi from various parts of the country this winter will no longer have to worry about the diversion of their flights.

Meanwhile, With Delhi’s air quality remaining in the ‘severe’ category for the last three days, city BJP chief Manoj Tiwari Monday demanded Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to call an all-party meeting to find a solution to the recurring crisis.

Taking a dig at the chief minister, Tiwari tweeted in Hindi, “Arvind Kejriwal ji (are) you still the CM? Why don’t you call an all-party meeting and a special session of the Delhi Assembly. Do you want us to believe that you cannot do it.”

The ‘severe’ quality of air was attributed to wind speed and other meteorological factors remaining “highly unfavourable” for dispersion of pollutants.

The Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) on Monday imposed a three-day ban on industrial activities in pollution hot-spots and construction work across the national capital region.