LAHORE, Jan 27: Thick fog blanketed Lahore and its suburbs on Saturday morning and massively disrupted the schedule of all international and domestic flights. Fog covered the city after a gap of some 20 days or so. However, it made no visible impact on the current weather and temperature remained more or less the same. The minimum temperature of the city recorded by the Met office on Saturday was 8 degrees Centigrade and maximum 22 C.

The airport authorities said at least 12 international and domestic flights either left or arrived here more than six hours late than their scheduled time.

The authorities concerned found difficulty in catering to a large number of passengers arrived at the airport to leave for their destinations. Long delay in the departure and arrival of the flights also caused great inconvenience to families and those arrived to receive their dear ones.

The departure of the flights for Karachi, Islamabad, Multan, Glasgow, London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, and arrival of flights from Karachi, Islamabad, Multan, Jeddah, Doha and Dubai were delayed due to heavy fog.

The fog blanketed the city at about 5am that lasted for more than five hours. A meteorologist told this reporter that decrease in temperature caused Saturday’s fog that would likely to persist on Sunday as well.

He said haze had been reported in other parts of the province.

Vehicular traffic moved at slow pace on intra-city routes and especially on highways and motorway as poor visibility made driving very difficult. The public transport coming from other districts of Punjab to Lahore reached here reportedly about two to fours hours late.

On the other hand, the Lahore division authorities of the Pakistan Railways claimed that all trains arrived here in time. However, owing to ongoing track rehabilitation work some trains were late but weather had “nothing to do with the delay”.