The India Meteorological Department’s bulletin issued at 10:00 a.m. on 1 December warns of severe cold-wave conditions in Punjab and Madhya Maharashtra through 3 December, with minimum temperatures already touching 2 °C in Faridkot. Simultaneously, dense fog is forecast for early-morning hours in Odisha, Manipur and parts of Himachal Pradesh, reducing visibility below 50 metres at times.
Aviation experts say such conditions typically trigger cascading delays at Delhi, Amritsar, Chandigarh and Bhubaneswar airports, where CAT-III instrument-landing capability is limited. The Airports Authority of India has asked carriers to deploy additional crew for duty-time contingencies and to keep passengers informed via SMS alerts. Low-visibility take-off and landing procedures could cut runway capacity by up to 40 %, affecting hub-and-spoke connections for international travellers transiting India.
![Dense-fog alert for north-east, cold wave in Punjab may snarl flights and road travel]()
Indian Railways has already instructed zonal control rooms to slow express trains on fog-prone corridors in the north-central network, potentially adding 1–2 hours to journeys on the busy Delhi–Kolkata and Delhi–Guwahati axes. Logistics firms moving time-sensitive pharma and e-commerce cargo are reviewing temperature-controlled trucking routes to avoid overnight bottlenecks.
For business-travel planners, the advisory means building extra buffer time into itineraries, booking flexible fares and notifying expatriate assignees unfamiliar with India’s winter-weather disruptions. Companies operating shuttle buses in industrial clusters such as Noida and Mohali are also re-routing services to bypass highways with heavy fog accident histories.
The IMD expects the cold-wave conditions to abate by 7 December, but meteorologists note that El Niño patterns could make this winter’s fog season more intense than average, signalling a longer period of potential mobility disruption through January.
Aviation experts say such conditions typically trigger cascading delays at Delhi, Amritsar, Chandigarh and Bhubaneswar airports, where CAT-III instrument-landing capability is limited. The Airports Authority of India has asked carriers to deploy additional crew for duty-time contingencies and to keep passengers informed via SMS alerts. Low-visibility take-off and landing procedures could cut runway capacity by up to 40 %, affecting hub-and-spoke connections for international travellers transiting India.
Indian Railways has already instructed zonal control rooms to slow express trains on fog-prone corridors in the north-central network, potentially adding 1–2 hours to journeys on the busy Delhi–Kolkata and Delhi–Guwahati axes. Logistics firms moving time-sensitive pharma and e-commerce cargo are reviewing temperature-controlled trucking routes to avoid overnight bottlenecks.
For business-travel planners, the advisory means building extra buffer time into itineraries, booking flexible fares and notifying expatriate assignees unfamiliar with India’s winter-weather disruptions. Companies operating shuttle buses in industrial clusters such as Noida and Mohali are also re-routing services to bypass highways with heavy fog accident histories.
The IMD expects the cold-wave conditions to abate by 7 December, but meteorologists note that El Niño patterns could make this winter’s fog season more intense than average, signalling a longer period of potential mobility disruption through January.
