Bengaluru: Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) in Bengaluru delayed operations of 54 flights on Thursday due to fog. Hundreds of passengers were left stranded at the airport for nearly five hours.

According to reports, dense fog caused delays in flight departure for the third time in a row. Airport authorities confirmed 36 flights scheduled for departure were delayed on Thursday and 17 flights due for arrival, were also delayed. BlueDart airlines from Mumbai has been diverted to Chennai.

A visibility standby was issued owing to low visibility. Such a standby is declared when the visibility decreases to below 2500 meters. It went on from 5.52 am to 9.08 am.

Many passengers to social media sites like Twitter to complain about the situation. A passenger by the name Vibha Jain posted in her Twitter handle “Flight was supposed to take off at 7:55 AM, you made a tweet 2 hours ago which is 10 AM. Wow. What compensate you gave- school picnic box. Passengers were forced to be seated in the plane for 3 hours. Kids were not allowed to use the washroom. Passenger literally tired asking for water,” she had stated.

Other passengers also complained about their displeasure and the inconvenience caused in various other social media sites.

IndiGo replied to the complaints stating that bad weather had resulted in the delay of operations it was reported.

Earlier there was a system error in the boarding pass printing desk and the passengers were given handwritten boarding passes for which they had to wait for hours in the long ques. This also caused a lot of displeasure to passengers.