IANS

New Delhi, Jan 15: A dense fog cover enveloped the national capital early Friday, disrupting flight and train schedules once again. The visibility level was low, slowing down vehicular movement on the roads.

Flight schedules were disrupted because of the fog at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport.

More than 15 flights were delayed by up to three hours while one Jetlite flight to Mumbai was cancelled because of the dense fog that enveloped the airport, an airport official told IANS.

"The runway visibility was around 150 to 275 metres for both the runways in the morning and flight operations were being carried out using the CAT-III B instrument landing system," the official said.

Train services were also disrupted. A Northern Railways spokesperson said as many as 23 trains were cancelled and 17 were running late because of the fog.

"Twenty three trains were either fully or partially cancelled because of the heavy fog. Partially cancelled means that the services on a part of the route were cancelled," a Northern Railways said.

The Katihar-Amritsar Express, Amritsar-Jaipur Express and Jhansi-Lucknow Express, among others, have been cancelled.

The trains running behind schedule by more than three hours include the Rajdhani Express from Bangalore and Dibrugarh, the Brahmaputra Mail, Kalka Shatabdi and Amritsar Shatabdi.

Dense fog reduced visibility to 200 metres, slowing down vehicular movement on the roads.

"At 7 a.m. the visibility level was just 200 metres because of the dense fog. However, the fog cover will disperse and the visibility will improve as the day progresses due to the high wind speed," an official of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.

A traffic police official said: "Traffic movement was slow in the morning because of the low visibility level. It was especially so near Moti Bagh and ITO."

The IMD official, however, said the visibility improved considerably as the day progressed. "In fact, it has already improved to 500 metres at 9 a.m.," the official added.

The minimum temperature recorded early Friday was a notch above average at 7.7 degrees Celsius. The maximum is expected to hover around 19 degrees.