Guwahati, March 17: Air services to the city remained disrupted for the third consecutive day today due to the haze triggered by dust storms, reducing visibility levels considerably.

The instrumental landing system (ILS) at the Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi Airport, which was removed on March 5 for runway extension work, was reinstated this evening.

The first flight could land at the airport only at 5pm, an hour after the ILS became operational, due to poor visibility caused by the dust haze.

The visibility had improved for some time in the afternoon and an attempt was made to make the airport operational at 1pm. But the effort was negated as the visibility levels again dropped to 2,000 metres, forcing the airlines to delay or divert their scheduled flights.

The minimum visibility level for manual landing should be 2,800 metres.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) extended the operational time of the airport to avoid cancellation of flights.

“Generally we close down by 8pm. But today we extended our operational time to facilitate all scheduled flights to land and take off from here,” S.C. Sharma, the regional executive director of the AAI, said.

He said with the ILS now in place, flights could land even if the visibility levels drop to 1,200 metres.

“The visibility level is very poor in the 10km radius of the airport, mainly because of the dust generated from the dry sand banks of the Brahmaputra,” Sharma said.

“To clear the backlog of passengers, some airlines is also operating additional flights to and from Guwahati,” he said.

The dust haze had been holding flights to ransom since March 15. Yesterday, the situation turned so bad that not a single flight could land or take off from here.

In the past two days, visibility levels were below 1,000 metres. However, an official of the meteorological office today said rain was expected soon.