: It is that time of the year, when dense fog disrupts flight schedules at the Delhi airport, leaving thousands of passengers stranded. The private airport operator, Delhi International Airport Ltd. (DIAL), however, promises to have taken steps to minimise the inconvenience caused to passengers .
Aiding visibility
This winter, the Delhi airport boasts of 18 Runway Visibility Range (RVR) equipment, which will help flights land in zero visibility by providing accurate visibility data to pilots and the air traffic control (ATC). The real-time information is expected to help with better scheduling of flights, minimising delays.
The ATC will also sequence the flights in the air as per their capability to use the Instrument Landing System (ILS) to land in poor visibility. The aircraft that are compliant to use the Category (CAT) IIIB ILS will be given preference over that don’t, resulting in faster operations. The Delhi ATC will also inform other airports about real-time visibility so that aircraft don’t take off from there for Delhi till the weather improves.
The airport witnessed flight disruptions last week after a spell of dense fog took the authorities by surprise and another spell is expected from Wednesday. According to the MeT department, the airport could see up to 100 hours of dense fog this season, which stretches up to the end of January 2017.
On Tuesday, DIAL said that it has introduced Pre-Departure Sequencing tool as part of the Delhi Airport-Collaborative Decision Making (DA-CDM) process.
“We are fully prepared to handle flight operations this year. CAT-IIIB system installed at Delhi Airport is capable of handling flight arrivals with Runway Visibility Range of up to 50 metres,” said I. Prabhakara Rao, DIAL CEO.
Disruption, recovery
The enhanced version of DA-CDM, which was introduced last year, has shown good results, he said. The process has enabled faster recovery at the time of flight disruption during low visibility condition, as it ensures optimum utilisation of ATC resources, runways/taxiways etc, resulting in reduced workload of controllers, minimum ground delays, reduced radio telephony congestion and increased level of safety, said Mr. Rao.
Three runways at the IGI Airport; 28, 29 and 11 are certified for CAT III B operations, which would allow landing of the compliant aircrafts with visibility as low as 50 metres. Aircraft can take off with visibility of 125 metres.
“Airports Authority of India (AAI) has made all the necessary arrangements to ensure uninterrupted provision of safe, efficient and orderly air traffic services at IGI Airport. All the DGCA mandated guidelines and recommendations in respect of IGI Airport, have been implemented by AAI,” said A.K. Bhardwaj, General Manager, Air Traffic Movement (ATM)-ATC.
