Calcutta, May 10: A cloudburst flooded the runway and terminal building of Port Blair airport this morning, leaving around a thousand passengers stranded.

No flight could land or take off, officials said, adding that the island’s airport has rarely been crippled like this because of waterlogging.

The runway and terminal building went under two feet of water in the morning. Of the 13 pairs of flights — two and fro — cancelled today, six were from Calcutta.

The Indian Navy declared the airport operational in the evening when the water level went down. Flights are expected to run tomorrow, the officials said.

According to the Met office in Port Blair, 133mm rainfall was recorded between 6am and 7.30am.

“There has been incessant rainfall since yesterday. But the heavy downpour for one-and-a-half hours in the morning caused the waterlogging,” assistant meteorologist K.K. Das said. “A cloudburst triggered the torrent.”

Over 24 hours since 8.30am yesterday, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have received 206.8mm of rain.

The officials said that with the monsoon approaching, the Andaman Sea and the adjoining south-east Bay of Bengal, cumulonimbus clouds have been forming over the region for the past three to four days. “The south-west monsoon set in over parts of south-east Bay of Bengal, Nicobar Islands and Andaman Sea today,” an official said.

A Jet Airways Calcutta-Port Blair flight took off from Dum Dum airport around 5am with 119 passengers. But it could not land and returned to Calcutta around 9.30am.

An Air India flight with 87 people on board made the same round trip, as did a Deccan flight. Deccan, however, cancelled its second flight and SpiceJet and JetLite followed suit.

“The entire first floor of the terminal building and the runway were under water. We had to move passengers from the lounge to the first floor,” R.S. D’Cruz, airport controller of the Airports Authority of India at Port Blair, said.

Most of the passengers were provided accommodation in hotels, airline officials said.

Around 9am, the water started receding but the airport had to remain shut for cleaning operations. “A lot of mud and garbage had filled the building and the runway,” D’Cruz said.

The Indian Navy hanger at the airport was also submerged, besides conveyer belts and computers, prompting authorities to turn off power supply. Most of the telephone lines went dead.