Flights services from the Kolkata airport resumed today after remaining suspended for 21 hours in view of the cyclone Remal, a NSCBI Airport official said on Monday.

The first plane to depart on Monday was IndiGo’s Kolkata-Port Blair flight at 8.59 a.m., while the first one to land at city airport in Kolkata was SpiceJet’s flight from Guwahati. It landed at 09.50 a.m., an Airports Authority of India (AAI) top official said. Check-in was on for some other flights, the official said. The last flight departed from Kolkata airport on Sunday at 12.16 p.m. Though the process of resuming flight operations has begun, it will take some more time for the situation to become normal, sources at the airport said. The cyclone, which made landfall around midnight on Sunday, brought heavy rain in the southern part of West Bengal, including Kolkata.

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The authorities of Kolkata airport have decided to suspend flight operations for 21 hours from Sunday noon in view of the possible impact of cyclone Remal. The precautionary measure was taken after a meeting of the stakeholders of the NSCBI Airport here on Saturday, the official said. Several flights, however, were diverted today to other airports following bad weather. There was a mad scramble for tickets to fly out of the city yesterday morning, which took air fares to skyrocket before Kolkata airport shut down. Between midnight and 12.16 p.m., the airport hosted 12,833 passengers, who left aboard 71 flights and 10,283 who flew in on 63 aircraft. Airlines said most of the vacant seats were booked on Saturday night and in the early hours of Sunday. On Sunday morning, Air India offered the quickest travel option to Chennai in 7 hours and 40 minutes. But one had to fly to Mumbai and switch to a Chennai bound flight. The fare worked out to Rs 79,403 at 7.30 a.m. Seats on direct flights to other major cities on nearly all airlines had been booked to capacity at that time. Only a few seats were empty on a few flights of Air India and associate carriers Vistara and Air India Express, which sold at sky-high prices.