When the Satluj Express collided with a school bus in Moga, Punjab on Friday morning killing 18 passengers and injuring 14 others, authorities in the state started taking steps to ensure that nothing went wrong elsewhere on account of fog which was said to be the primary cause for the accident.

Officials said the speeding bus driver did not see the manned crossing and the train which was travelling at the speed of 100 kilometers an hour.

Fog, which is an annual feature in north India, especially Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Srinagar [Images], once again played spoil sport on Friday when it forced several flights to either be postponed by a few hours or cancelled altogether.

A private airline operating between Delhi and Shimla had to cancel its flights, leaving a fairly large number of passengers stranded. Likewise, aircraft which were scheduled to take off for Jammu and Srinagar were unable to take off due to the dense fog, leaving passengers aggrieved at the airline for not informing them beforehand.

Union Minister for Civil Aviation Praful Patel expressed his helplessness in the situation. "London [Images] and other cities in Europe are closed for days together and no one complains about it. Here people at least reach their destination," he said when asked what his ministry was doing to improve the situation.

Patel's predecessor, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, said that norms had been laid down to meet the challenges posed by fog. "We had told airlines that they must train their pilots to land in zero visibility circumstances and that they should install CAT III landing equipment. But since it is just a thirty day phenomenon, none of them want to incur such a big investment," Rudy told rediff.com.