Fog envelops the Calcutta airport runway early on Tuesday. All morning flights were delayed while Monday night flights were diverted. (PTI)

Fog hung heavy over the Calcutta skyline for the second consecutive day, disrupting everything from takeoff to tee-off.

Eleven flights to the city were diverted elsewhere late on Monday with visibility dropping rapidly because of dense fog. All morning flights were delayed by more than two hours on an average.

Airport officials said flights were stalled from 10pm on Monday till 8am on Tuesday. Visibility had dropped below 50 metres around 1am, forcing the authorities to shut down the runway. The last aircraft to land on Monday night was Kingfisher’s Delhi-Calcutta flight, which touched down at 9.58pm.

The Met office has forecast more foggy nights and mornings as winter sets in after an unusually warm spell that saw minimum temperatures hitting record highs last week.

“Temperatures will steadily drop from now on. The anti-cyclonic circulation in north India has become weak, setting the stage for winter,” a senior official of the Alipore Met station said.

“I am glad winter is finally on its way but the fog is a bother. I am flying to Delhi and am worried that I will miss my appointments because of this delay,” said a businessman who was stranded at the airport for a couple of hours.

Some golfers were also stranded, though not at the airport. Participants in the RCGC Cup, being held at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club, teed off 45 minutes behind schedule on Tuesday because of the fog on the fairways.

“We had to wait for the sun to burn the mist. But we don’t foresee any difficulty in completing the tournament,” said Brandon De Souza, the CEO and managing director of Tiger Sports Marketing.

According to RCGC members, fog is common in December but it has never disrupted a tournament on the greens.

The forecast for the next 24 hours is a clear sky with temperatures between 16 degrees and 26 degrees Celsius. The maximum temperature on Tuesday was 24.9 degrees Celsius, two degrees below normal. The minimum temperature of 16 degrees Celsius was still two points above normal.

Officials of private airlines said fog-induced delays were not only throwing schedules haywire but also triggering passenger protests.

City-based businessman Pulkit Chawla, who was on the Singapore-Calcutta-Dhaka flight of Air India Express that could not land at the airport, said he had a “harrowing experience” in the Bangladesh capital.

“The captain of the flight announced 15 minutes before we were to land in Calcutta (at 10.25pm) that we would be proceeding to Dhaka instead. We had to spend the night in the lounge of Dhaka airport. The airline didn’t even arrange for adequate drinking water,” he alleged. The flight arrived in Calcutta at noon on Tuesday.

Kingfisher, Air India, JetLite, IndiGo and Jet Airways diverted flights to Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Nagpur and Hyderabad on Monday night. All these flights arrived after 11am on Tuesday.

Train services were affected, too. Railway officials said 13 long-distance trains arrived in the city late, the delay ranging from 40 minutes to four hours. The fog-hit trains included the Sealdah and Howrah-bound Rajdhani Express, Kalka Mail, Jodhpur Express and Amritsar Mail. Suburban trains from Howrah and Sealdah were delayed by 40 minutes on an average.