Air India issues advisory amid dense fog, cold wave forecast for Delhi, several other states: '​Closely monitoring' | Today News

Air India has issued a travel advisory urging passengers to check the latest flight status before leaving for the airport, as it seeks to limit disruptions caused by fog and reduced visibility affecting flight operations.

In its advisory, the airline warned that the prevailing weather conditions could trigger a cascading impact on flight schedules across its network, leading to delays, diversions and cancellations. It said the situation is being closely monitored and that several proactive measures have been put in place to reduce inconvenience to travellers.

"We are closely monitoring the situation and have taken some proactive measures to minimise disruptions (details available at: http://bit.ly/4agYVyF). Should any unexpected delays, diversions or cancellations occur, our ground staff will be at your service to extend support to our guests.

Under our FogCare initiative, passengers booked on flights likely to be affected by fog receive alerts in advance with options to reschedule the flight at no extra cost or cancel it and get a full refund without penalties," the advisory read.

The weather office has forecast dense fog during the morning hours on Wednesday in Delhi and issued a yellow alert. Maximum and minimum temperatures on Wednesday are expected to hover around 16 degrees Celsius and 7 degrees Celsius, respectively, with cold day conditions likely to persist.

Meanwhile, Delhi’s air quality worsened further, with the 24-hour average Air Quality Index (AQI) dropping to 310, placing it in the ‘very poor’ category, compared with 244 recorded on Monday.

Data from the Central Pollution Control Board’s Sameer app showed that 27 monitoring stations reported ‘very poor’ air quality, 10 were in the ‘poor’ category and one station recorded ‘moderate’ air quality. Mundka registered the worst AQI at 369 on Tuesday evening.

Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department (IMD), in its bulletin, said cold wave conditions were very likely to prevail over Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Odisha from January 7 to January 9. It added that Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are also expected to experience cold wave conditions later this week.

The IMD said “cold day conditions” were likely over “Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh on January 6 and 7; West Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh on January 6; East Rajasthan, West Bengal & Sikkim during January 6–8; Jharkhand on January 6, 2026.”

Apart from the cold wave, dense fog is expected to persist during the morning hours across north-west, central, eastern and north-eastern India over the next five to seven days.

“Dense to very dense fog conditions very likely to prevail in morning hours in some parts over Punjab, Haryana-Chandigarh during January 7–9 and Dense fog in isolated pockets for subsequent 4 days,” the IMD said in its bulletin.

In Jharkhand, where a cold wave alert has been issued, temperatures dropped below 10 degrees Celsius in 10 districts on Tuesday, PTI quoted officials as saying.