From the second week of December and into the fourth week of January, I'm usually betting on such flights having a great chance of substantial departure delays due to fogs. [Some years there's a bit more luck than others.]

.... which ties into a large part of the reason why I found the AA CEO's comment about arrival in Delhi in the last American Way magazine I read this year to be a joke given it peddled fiction more than reality when it came to arrival in Delhi at this time of the year.

The worst thing about a fog season's flights out of DEL is that when major delays still occur and crews go "illegal" with no replacement/recovery for many hours, some airlines still end up with issues of giving each passenger a hotel room without trying to pair them up with strangers.

AA got delayed by nearly 18 hours today due to fog and the delay making the crew "illegal".