Yekaterinburg’s Koltsovo Airport neither let any planes land on its runways nor allowed any aircraft to take off from its premises from 9:00 PM on November 28 to 2:00 AM on November 29, 2010 due to unfavorable weather conditions. The heavy snowfall and a strong wind reduced visibility in the airport area down to 150 meters and the friction coefficient of the runway was lower than the officially permitted limit of 0.3, all of which caused considerable flight delays.

Twenty-four flights were delayed on November 28 alone: thirteen planes arrived late and eleven aircraft’s departure was put off. The planes that were expected to land in Yekaterinburg had to use some emergency airports: those flying from Bangkok, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Krasnodar, Hurghada, and Rome went to Ufa, those flying from Vladivostok and Dubai landed in Perm, and those flying from Instabul and Irkutsk ended up landing in Kasan and Tyumen, respectively.

All the planes started to leave for Koltsovo Airport once the airport had been opened up again, but such late arrivals resulted in timetable discrepancies. However, all the delayed flights have left for their destination airports by now.

‘The airport is getting back on track,’ Koltsovo’s press service points out.