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Dense fog hits city flights, ferries
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MORE than 60 flights were canceled and 180 were delayed at Shanghai’s two airports yesterday due to heavy fog and low cloud cover.
The problem started about 9am when the visibility at both Pudong and Hongqiao airports dropped to less than a kilometer, the Shanghai Airport Authority said.
Flights into and out of Hongqiao were suspended about an hour later when visibility dropped to just 200 meters, though normal operations resumed around 11am.
Despite the short-lived nature of the problem, the knock-on effect lasted well into the afternoon, with many passengers reporting delays.
“My flight was scheduled to take off at 3pm, but they told me I had to change to another one that was leaving at 4pm,” Beijing-bound businessman Bai Bo told Shanghai Daily. “And then I was told my replacement (China Eastern) flight might be delayed until 5pm.”
Another passenger, surnamed Tang, said she had to wait an extra two hours after her original flight to Beijing was canceled and she was transferred to another.
China Southern Airlines issued a travel alert to passengers about 10am yesterday saying its flights out of Hongqiao were running about three hours late.
Heather Ford, a tourist from the United States who was traveling to Thailand via Guangzhou with her husband and child, said she was worried the delay might leave her short on time to catch her connecting flight at the south China airport.
“The three-hour transit period has been cut to two. I just hope it won’t affect our onward journey,” she said.
Problems for ferry operators
China Eastern and Shanghai Airlines said they were forced to combine several flights to east and southeast China yesterday due to the bad weather, while Spring Airlines diverted six flights to the neighboring cities of Hangzhou and Ningbo. Juneyao Airlines said it was forced to cancel a dozen flights out of the two Shanghai airports.
The fog also caused problems for the city’s ferry operators yesterday, which were forced to suspend all operations from 6:40am until 10:30am.
“Everything went white, the fog was so dense,” said a security guard surnamed Ji, who works at a ferry dock on Dongfang Road in the Pudong New Area. “You couldn’t even see the opposite bank of the river, so we were told that all ferries would be halted until it cleared,” she said
While the suspension caused problems for some, Li said there were not so many people at the dock yesterday. “A lot of migrant workers have already gone home for the Chinese New Year holidays,” she said, adding that normal service was resumed about 10:30am.
During the four hours the ferries were halted, the transport commission laid on extra bus services to take people across the Huangpu via the Dalian and Xiangyin road tunnels.
The poor visibility caused some problems on the roads yesterday, with speed controls imposed on some expressways, though police declined to say if it had caused any major accidents.
While most parts of the city were blanketed in fog early yesterday, the worst of it had dispersed by lunchtime.
Strong winds are forecast for today, which should clear any remnants of fog, though the overall outlook will be little changed. Showers are likely to remain throughout today and the weekend, before giving way to drier, colder weather next week.
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