Cyclone Flight Cancellations India: The Bay of Bengal Season

Every year between October and December, the same story plays out on India's east coast: a cyclone forms over the Bay of Bengal, and hours before it makes landfall, an airport hundreds of kilometres away from the eye already sits with an empty runway. Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam and Kolkata have all cancelled flights ahead of a storm rather than waiting for it to arrive. If you're flying anywhere on that stretch of coast in the last quarter of the year, understanding why airports move early, and what that actually means for your specific flight, is more useful than watching the storm track alone.

Why the same story repeats every October to December

The Bay of Bengal has two active windows for tropical cyclone formation: April to June, ahead of the monsoon, and October to December, after it withdraws. High wind shear through the monsoon months of June to September suppresses formation almost entirely in between, which is why the activity clusters into those two windows rather than spreading evenly across the year. Within the October-to-December window, November is the peak month for intensification, one of only three months identified with maximum intensification probability (Wikipedia, "Tropical cyclones in the Bay of Bengal," captured 2026-09-23).

That's the mechanism. The part that actually affects a traveller is what airports and airlines do about it, and that pattern is far more predictable than the storm itself.

The pre-emptive-cancellation pattern: a safety decision, not a delay

A cyclone cancellation looks different from a routine weather delay. A delay responds to conditions as they happen. A cyclone suspension is announced in advance, sometimes a full day ahead of landfall, and it applies to a fixed window of hours regardless of how the storm behaves in between.

That's deliberate. Aircraft, ground equipment and terminal infrastructure all need to be secured or moved before sustained high winds arrive, not during them, and airline crews need to be repositioned out of the storm's path in time. Waiting to see how bad the weather actually gets removes the option to do any of that safely. So airports and airlines default to closing early and reopening once conditions clear, which is why a suspension announced 24 hours out can end up covering a period when the weather locally looks completely calm.

The pattern below repeats with almost every named cyclone that has threatened the east coast in recent years, just with different airports depending on where the storm is expected to cross.

Bhubaneswar, October 2024: Cyclone Dana

Biju Patnaik International Airport (BBI) in Bhubaneswar suspended all flight operations from 5:00pm IST on October 24 to 9:00am IST on October 25, 2024, a 16-hour window, ahead of severe cyclonic storm Dana. Kolkata's airport suspended operations on a near-identical schedule, from 6:00pm on October 24 to 9:00am on October 25, a 15-hour window (BusinessToday, captured 2026-09-23). The advisories naming those exact closure windows went out on October 23, roughly a full day before the suspensions actually began. Airlines including Air India and IndiGo cancelled their scheduled services for the window as a precaution, ahead of the storm's expected landfall on the Odisha coast.

Chennai, December 2023: Cyclone Michaung

Chennai's MAA airport was closed to arrivals and departures until around 11:00pm on December 4, 2023, as Cyclone Michaung tracked toward the Andhra Pradesh coast. Seventy flights, arriving and departing, were affected that day. Thirty-three of them were diverted to Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport rather than held or cancelled outright, carrying passengers on airlines including IndiGo, SpiceJet, Etihad, Lufthansa and Gulf Air (Onmanorama, captured 2026-09-23). That split, diversion for some flights and cancellation for others, is common in a coastal cyclone closure: aircraft already airborne or close to departure get redirected to the nearest unaffected airport, while flights that haven't left the ground yet are simply cancelled or held for the window to pass.

Visakhapatnam, October 2025: Cyclone Montha

All 32 domestic and international flights scheduled at Visakhapatnam airport (VTZ) on October 29, 2025 were cancelled ahead of severe cyclonic storm Montha, alongside 16 of 21 scheduled flights at nearby Vijayawada airport. "We operate around 30 to 32 movements daily, domestic as well as international. Today, all those flights are cancelled," Vizag Airport Director N. Purushottam said at the time (Outlook India, captured 2026-09-23). Two Air India Express flights had already been pulled two days earlier, on October 27, as the storm's track firmed up, well before the full-day shutdown that followed.

What to actually do if you're flying the east coast, October through December

None of this means every flight through Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam or Kolkata gets caught in a cyclone closure during those three months. Most don't; a named cyclone making landfall on a specific stretch of coast on a specific day is still a relatively rare event set against the number of flights those airports run year-round. What the pattern above tells you is how to read the situation when a storm is actually forming.

• A named storm in the forecast is the signal to watch, not the weather at your departure city. Cyclone suspensions are announced well before local conditions turn bad, so "it looks fine outside" is not evidence your flight will go ahead as planned.
• Expect an advisory roughly a day ahead, covering a fixed window. Airports have consistently announced closures with something close to 24 hours' notice, naming exact start and end times rather than "until further notice."
• If your flight is airborne or close to departure when a closure starts, expect a diversion rather than a cancellation. Chennai's Michaung closure diverted 33 of the 70 affected flights to Bengaluru instead of cancelling them outright.
• Check your specific flight and airline directly once a storm is named. Airlines have cancelled individual flights days ahead of a full airport suspension, as Air India Express did before Cyclone Montha's landfall, so a general "the airport is fine today" status doesn't cover a flight that's already been pulled on its own.
• Build slack into any connection through an east-coast airport in this window. A 15-to-16-hour suspension, as seen at both Bhubaneswar and Kolkata for Cyclone Dana, is enough to strand a same-day connection even on an itinerary with no other weather exposure.

How TrackMyWings helps

TrackMyWings™ is a live flight-tracking platform in development. A private beta shipped on 2026-08-24, Android only, on the Play internal testing track with a small group of named testers.

What's planned at launch, described here in future tense because none of it has shipped: gate and status alerts, and a live map, intended to surface exactly this kind of storm-driven suspension, diversion or cancellation as it's announced, rather than leaving you to piece it together across separate airport and airline advisories. Public launch has no fixed date. For more on how weather patterns specifically affect Indian airports, see our airport tips collection.

Questions people ask

Why do airports cancel flights before a cyclone actually arrives? Because securing aircraft, ground equipment and repositioning crew all need to happen before sustained high winds hit, not during them. Waiting to see how bad the storm gets removes the time needed to do that safely, so airports default to a fixed closure window announced in advance.

Which east-coast airports are most exposed to Bay of Bengal cyclones? Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam and Kolkata have all suspended operations ahead of named cyclones in recent years, since all four sit on or near the coastline a Bay of Bengal storm is likely to cross.

How much advance notice do these closures usually give? In the cases above, airports issued advisories naming the exact closure window roughly a day ahead of when the suspension actually began, rather than announcing a closure as the storm arrived.

If my flight is cancelled for a cyclone, will it be rebooked or diverted instead? It depends on timing. Flights already airborne or close to departure when a closure starts are often diverted to the nearest unaffected airport, as happened with 33 flights during Chennai's Cyclone Michaung closure; flights that haven't departed are typically cancelled or held for the window to pass.

Is the cyclone season the same every year? The Bay of Bengal's post-monsoon cyclone window runs October through December most years, with November typically the most active month, but the number, strength and exact track of storms varies from year to year.

Sources

• Tropical cyclones in the Bay of Bengal, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclones_in_the_Bay_of_Bengal, captured 2026-09-23
• Cyclone Dana: All flight operations from Kolkata, Bhubaneswar airports suspended for 15 hours, BusinessToday: https://www.businesstoday.in/india/story/cyclone-dana-all-flight-operations-from-kolkata-bhubaneswar-airports-suspended-for-15-hours-451366-2024-10-24, captured 2026-09-23
• Cyclone Michaung: Chennai airport halted, flights diverted, Onmanorama: https://www.onmanorama.com/travel/travel-news/2023/12/04/cyclone-michaung-chennai-airport-halted-flights-diverted.html, captured 2026-09-23
• All 32 Flights Operating From Visakhapatnam Airport Cancelled Due To Cyclone Montha, Outlook India: https://www.outlookindia.com/national/all-32-flights-operating-from-vizag-airport-cancelled-due-to-cyclone-montha, captured 2026-09-23