Cyclone Murasu Cancels IndiGo Flights at Chennai and Vijayawada Hours Before Andhra Pradesh Landfall

IndiGo canceled 11 flights at Chennai and 10 rotations at Vijayawada on Monday, November 2, 2026, as Severe Cyclonic Storm Murasu closed in on the south Andhra Pradesh coast. Air India Express also dropped two rotations at Vijayawada.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) expects Murasu to cross the coast between Nellore and Narsapur, south of Ongole, between 11:30 p.m. on Monday and 4 a.m. on Tuesday, November 3, India time.

Which flights are canceled

Chennai International Airport posted its list on X at about 9:05 a.m. India time. All 11 flights are IndiGo services, linking Chennai with Vijayawada, Rajahmundry, Kadapa and Tiruchirappalli between 12:30 p.m. and 11:20 p.m.

Five of them were departures from Chennai and six were arrivals. The Tiruchirappalli flights stand out, because that city is in Tamil Nadu, well south of the storm’s forecast track.

Vijayawada International Airport listed 10 IndiGo cancellations at about 7:15 a.m. Each line on that list is a rotation: an inbound flight and the departure that follows it, running from a 12:10 p.m. arrival to an 8:55 p.m. departure.

The routes include Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Tirupati, Visakhapatnam and Kurnool. Later in the morning, the airport added two Air India Express rotations: IX2413 and IX2414 from and back to Visakhapatnam, and IX2405 and IX2406 from and back to Hyderabad.

For scale, Vijayawada handled 38 aircraft movements on Sunday, 19 arrivals and 19 departures, according to the airport’s own daily tally. Monday’s 12 canceled rotations account for 24 movements.

Why the reported numbers do not match

Coverage of the cancellations has carried different totals. Onmanorama reported 11 at Chennai, matching the airport’s list, while The Hans India gave both 11 and 21 for Chennai, and both 10 and 14 for Vijayawada.

Part of the gap is counting. Three IndiGo flights, 6E7304, 6E7305 and 6E7306, fly between Chennai and Vijayawada, so they appear on both airports’ lists, and Vijayawada counts a rotation as one entry although it is two flights.

What IndiGo told passengers

IndiGo issued a travel advisory at 11:42 p.m. on Sunday, saying Tropical Cyclone Murasu was affecting flights to and from Rajahmundry, Vijayawada and Tirupati. It said it was notifying affected customers on the mobile number given at booking and asked them to check their flight status before going to the airport.

A second advisory at 8:15 a.m. on Monday said bad weather in Visakhapatnam was disrupting operations there, with extended waits on the ground and on board. That post did not name the cyclone or say whether flights were canceled.

Where Murasu is heading

Murasu became a cyclonic storm at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday and strengthened into a severe cyclonic storm by 2:30 a.m. on Monday, the IMD said. At 8:30 a.m. Monday it was about 99 miles (160 km) east-southeast of Nellore and 112 miles (180 km) northeast of Chennai, moving west-northwest at about 14 mph (22 km/h).

The IMD forecasts sustained winds of 62 to 68 mph (100 to 110 km/h), gusting to 75 mph (120 km/h), at landfall. It has issued a cyclone warning for Andhra Pradesh and the adjoining north Tamil Nadu coast.

Why flights far from landfall get canceled

IndiGo has not said how it chose the flights. A cancellation that looks unrelated, like Chennai to Tiruchirappalli, is often a knock-on: if the aircraft or crew scheduled for it was due to come from a cyclone-hit airport, the later flight goes too.

Airlines also tend to cancel hours before the worst weather, so aircraft are not left parked overnight at a coastal airport that may close. A tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal is the same kind of storm as an Atlantic hurricane, and AeroCorner’s explainer on flying near hurricanes covers what its winds mean for aircraft.

For travelers on this coast, Murasu is the second storm in a week. On October 27 and 28, Cyclone Arnab disrupted flights at Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Chennai, and IndiGo’s Arnab advisory named Rajahmundry and Vijayawada, two of the cities on Monday’s list.

With landfall due overnight, neither IndiGo nor the two airports had announced cancellations for Tuesday at the time of writing. Passengers booked on November 3 should check their flight with the airline before leaving for the airport.