When does the annual fog start to hit DEL? Are the midnight departures generally "safe"?

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You'd have to chance it. No way to be sure except that fog when present is typically heaviest early early am.

You can expect it most days between December & Jan. Although I have been delayed by it in Feb too. Midnight departures are normally ok but the late night up until 10am flights are generally the most affected ones.

Usually Dec 15 - Jan 15, but Nov and Feb remain outlying possibilities.

The following two make interesting reading side by side:

Nov 21, 2010 "Fog delays unlikely this winter as airlines train more pilots"
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/...100278018.html

Nov 26. 2010 "Fog delays flights at Delhi�s IGI airport"
http://www.theindiadaily.com/fog-del...is-igi-airport

if you have a choice, then try to avoid DEL in Dec and Jan.. like others have said, midnight departures are fine but later may be a problem ..

i actually disagree with those who say midnight departures are ok....i have lost count of the number of times my late night flights (an hour or so before or after midnight) have been delayed by fog in delhi....its worse in dec & jan but most of the time it spills into feb as well....

stick to afternoon & early evening flights as much as possible....

which removes most european + american airlines out and hence may make sense to try and avoid DEL if possible..

if you can avoid delhi during dec & jan then nothing like it....i hate flying in & out of delhi during these months....

I agree with the advice that afternoon and early evening departures are the safest, but may have to deal with the backlog of delayed nighttime and early morning flights. (When runways do clear, international flights and bigger planes are given priority over domestic flights and smaller planes.)

Should you avoid DEL altogether?

If you have an important deadline or an infrequent connection later, then yes, fly out of BOM, HYD, DEL, MAD, CCU, etc.

If you are flying nonstop, or connecting to a frequently departing flight, etc., and can afford to be late, then DEL will somehow muddle through.

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/...100475011.html

no signs of fog this year in DEL so far. it has hit BLR instead!!

Interesting news about fog disrupting air traffic in BLR, and also HYD. However, sadly no break for DEL, the fog just reached there early this year.

http://www.theindiadaily.com/fog-del...is-igi-airport

Mumbai (BOM) still appears to be the safest gateway city to India during winter (Dec-Jan).

the fog hit DEL on 25th Dec, and managed to usurp some flight schedules. but the DGCA has changed rules for visibility criteria for landing now and hopefully more flights will be able to land. this is based on the assumption that 66% of the pilots and planes in india (approx) are now equipped for a CAT IIIB landing procedure. lets see how it plays out. hopefully, the Airport wont turn into a bus stand this year!

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".

As noted by other posters, fog arrived with a vengeance on Christmas eve. Picked up some relatives arriving Christmas night and the visibility dropped from ~100 m to near zero in less than an hour. AA 292 was able to land at 10 pm but couldn't find the terminal and had to be escorted in. When visibility dropped below 50 m (the CAT III B ILS minimum) one arrival later (AI flight from Dubai), IGI was closed to arrivals and the next 14 international arrivals were diverted to Jaipur, Lucknow, and Ahmedabad. Am told there were over 40 diversions in all on both Christmas eve and Christmas night.

That being said, in my experience midnight departures are normally safe...it's the arrivals that you have to worry about. Since most foreign carriers are turnarounds, you should know before setting out to the airport if your inbound equipment has landed or not.

As rsh913 points out, most of the outbound disruptions tend to be in the early morning (5-8 am) and IMO those are largely driven by non-CAT III qualified equipment or crews of the domestic airlines.