Diwali Firecracker Smoke Delays 26 Flights at Chennai and Sends IndiGo 6E2002 to Bengaluru

IndiGo flight 6E2002 from Raipur to Chennai diverted to Bengaluru on the night of Sunday, November 8, 2026, after smoke from Diwali firecrackers settled over Chennai International Airport. Airport sources quoted by Chennai’s DT Next said the haze delayed 26 flights in all, and that the diverted IndiGo jet carried 156 passengers.

Official weather reports from the airport confirm the smoke. They show smoke over the field from 7:30 pm local time and visibility down to about 2,000 feet (600 m) for much of the late evening.

What happened at Chennai

Rain on Sunday morning held back the celebrations, according to DT Next, and residents began bursting crackers around 6 pm, an hour before the permitted 7 pm start. The bursting carried on past 10 pm, including in the residential neighborhoods around the airport at Meenambakkam.

Eleven arriving flights had to circle, the airport sources said, from Kolkata, Delhi, Pune, Sri Lanka, Bangkok, Thiruvananthapuram, Singapore, Raipur, Siliguri, Tiruchirappalli and Kuala Lumpur. Ten landed once visibility improved; the eleventh, from Raipur, diverted.

Fifteen departures left late, among them flights to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

The Airports Authority of India, which runs Chennai International Airport, had expected visibility trouble and added arrangements in the air traffic control room, DT Next reported. Landings and takeoffs were allowed only when runway visibility was judged safe.

ETV Bharat carried the same figures. Neither outlet named an official.

Chennai Airport’s own X account, which posted Diwali greetings on November 8, had published no statement on the disruption at the time of writing on November 9.

The Raipur flight

Neither report gave a flight number for the diverted IndiGo jet. Tracking data on Flightradar24 identifies it as 6E2002, an Airbus A321neo registered VT-ILJ, which left Raipur at 8:47 pm and was due in Chennai at 10:45 pm.

At that hour the airport was reporting its worst visibility of the night. The same tracking data shows the aircraft logged as diverted to Bengaluru, then flying on to Chennai at 1:23 am on November 9 and landing there at 1:54 am, by which time visibility had improved to about 6,600 feet (2,000 m).

What the weather reports show

Chennai’s weather office issues a routine airport report, called a METAR, every half hour. Its reports for Sunday night, published by the US Aviation Weather Center, carry the code FU, the international abbreviation for smoke, from the 7:30 pm observation onward.

Local time, Nov 8 to 9	Reported visibility	Weather codes
7:00 pm	4,900 ft (1,500 m)	Thunderstorm, rain
7:30 pm	4,900 ft (1,500 m)	Drizzle, smoke
8:00 pm to 8:30 pm	2,600 ft (800 m)	Smoke, mist
9:00 pm to 9:30 pm	4,900 ft (1,500 m)	Smoke, mist
10:00 pm to 11:30 pm	2,000 ft (600 m)	Smoke, mist, then fog
Midnight	4,900 ft (1,500 m)	Shallow fog, smoke
12:30 am to 4:00 am	6,600 ft (2,000 m)	Smoke, mist

Between 10 pm and 11:30 pm the reports put runway visual range, the distance a pilot can see along the runway, at about 3,000 to 3,900 feet (900 to 1,200 m). Smoke stayed in the reports until 4 am on November 9.

Every instrument approach has a published visibility minimum, and when the reported value falls below it, crews cannot begin the approach and hold instead.

Once the fuel planned for holding runs down, they divert, which is what happened to the Raipur flight after a long hold, according to ETV Bharat.

Our explainer on the instrument landing system covers how those minimums are set.

A recurring problem for Chennai

Smoke from celebrations has hit the airport before. During Diwali in October 2017, DT Next reported that 23 flights were delayed or diverted, including a GoAir flight from Hyderabad sent to Bengaluru after its pilot could not locate the runway.

Last year’s Diwali was milder: the airport sources said 15 flights were delayed in 2025, with no diversion.

The other recurring culprit is Bhogi in January, when bonfire smoke mixes with winter fog. On January 14, 2026, DT Next counted 14 cancellations and 30 delays.

Chennai flights were already disrupted earlier this month, when Cyclone Murasu canceled flights there. Passengers whose flights end up elsewhere can read our guide to how flight diversions work.