Chennai: In what can bring in some respite to the stranded passengers, the Chennai Airport will resume partial operations from Saturday, with the runway found to be safe for landings and departures.
"Flight operations from Chennai airport will resume partially from tomorrow. The flights will operate during the day time," Airports Authority of India (AAI) Chairman R K Srivastava told PTI.
The airport would open at 6 AM and flights would operate till day light is there, he said.
At present the operations at the Chennai airport are suspended due to heavy rains and water logging on the runway.
Chennai city and suburbs today started picking up crumbs of life with flood waters receding in several areas but lakhs of people continued to suffer from lack of supply of essentials including water, power, milk and food items.
Meanwhile, in a very tragic incident, at least 18 people died due to power failure in one of the hospitals in the flood-hit Chennai city today.
According to reports, some patients were brought to the Madras Institute of Orthopaedics and Traumatology (MIOT) Hospital in a critical condition, However, 18 of them could not be saved as power outage led to ventilator failure during their treatment.
Mobile phone services, which had taken a severe beating following the heavy downpour on Tuesday, were partially restored even as other services such as ATMs continued to remain shut.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had yesterday conducted separate aerial surveys of the areas battered by the unprecedented rains that have killed 269 people till now.
