Conditions at DEL this week
 

I am due to fly into and out of DEL on Wednesday and Thursday this week. Is there any hope of the visibility improving over the next few days?

Get your gas mask and oxygen tanks.

It does look a little alarming. If I have a reasonable chance of getting out on Thursday I would risk it...

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/03/i...cli/index.html

It’s hard to say what things will be like on Thursday. But I doubt it will improve substantially before then.

The air quality in Delhi was bad in the 1990s, got better, but now it’s the worst ever and many times worse than it is in Beijing.

The smog isn’t good for flights and it’s going to make for quite some mess in traffic of all sorts as the fog season comes in harder.

I minimize my time in Delhi because of how bad the air pollution is — more so at this time of the year. It’s not going to improve enough for me anytime soon.

my flight yesterday was delayed by over 3 hours but eventually took off....today visibility was better & my flight landed on time....

they claim the situation will get better over the next 2-3 days but i'm trying to avoid flying this week....i have to fly to bom on thursday but i'm trying to move the trip to next week....

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a7a9711df.jpeg
at the airport yesterday around noon....

While Delhi NCR is pretty much FUBAR in terms of pollution, DEL manages pretty well since they upgraded everything to Cat IIIb a few years ago. Last year I was on a AI B787 and we taxied and took off in terrible visibility.

DEL doesn’t manage so great when the flight crew can’t make it to the airport due to the situation on the ground with ground transport.

The smog pollution at this time of year in DEL can be solved by the Union government making Haryana and UP into Union territories and having the central government ban whatever the government wants to ban in order to improve air quality fast. But they won’t do it, and so this bad air quality and all it means for travelers and flight crews will continue for years to come unless and until the Indian courts intervene in a way that would probably displease various elected officials.

Are flight crews and their unions making calls to avoid flying to/from DEL during such bad air quality periods? Protecting the health of their members is a rather fundamental interest of the airline employee unions.

they can do that right now since both states have the same government as the one in the center....but instead of tackling real issues they are more concerned with changing name of cities & pleasing their core vote base....

crop burning in punjab, haryana & up is one of the main causes of this current situation....punjab is the only state among the 3 which has done something to reduce crop burning but simply offering a subsidy to farmers is not enough....they are already under so much debt in this current economic situation that no amount fee reduction will help....the government has to step up & assume the entire cost to resolve this situation....if the government wanted then they could have ensured that they stopped the farmers from crop burning in haryana & up but then that would have meant upsetting their vote base with state & by-elections taking place at the same time....

The last time I was able to again live in Delhi and sort of enjoy it due to pollution reduction measures, it involved court rulings. The shift to upgraded radar systems didn’t require a court ruling for it to be possible, but the radar change has helped a lot with at least helping me to minimize my exposure to DEL.

A public health emergency has been declared in Delhi such that even schools are closed because of the air pollution levels being so awful.

Shouldn’t foreign airlines serving DEL be responsible and protect their flight crew members from the DEL smog and have at least as “no-stay” arrangement for employees who may be serving flights to/from DEL?

public health emergency was declared last weekend & schools were closed on monday & tuesday....everything has resumed since yesterday....i had a flight this morning & there was a world of a difference at the airport today when compared to last sunday....

also, it has been raining since this morning, with more rain forecast for later this evening....that should help bring the pollution level down further....

I have to report that Wednesday and Thursday were both pretty clear days although my throat felt rather sore during my visit. One advantage of the smog was the 'odd-and-even' rule that cut down traffic considerably!

The license-plate-based odd-and-even rule comes and goes in waves around Delhi; but now the number of people having cars or having multiple cars is far higher than it was when I first started encountering this in DEL. And it's not a permanent solution for improving conditions at DEL and is too little too late for sustainable improvements.

A Danish-style car tax, a London-scale congestion charge, a costly car maintenance check/requirement and Swedish-levels of gas taxation is really needed in India for India's most smog-hit areas to become way less of a hazard to my respiratory system. But it's not going to happen anytime soon, and I can't count on the Indian courts to be what they used to be. I can count on DEL air messing up my respiratory tract again. :eek:

Air quality around the US Embassy in Delhi is horrible again today, and it’s even noted as hazardous here:

https://us.yahoo.com/news/haze-wraps...071604878.html

At some point, some airlines are going to have to do right by their employees and take a break at times from serving DEL if they are to be serious about their employees’ health and safety interests.