Thursday, July 8, 2010

Indian Airports Upgrade Air Traffic Management Facilities

Aviation Daily
July 08, 2010

air trafic management

The Airport Authority of India (AAI) has started looking at upgrading air traffic management (ATM) facilities and reviewing methods to improve safety, mostly in Delhi, where a new Terminal 3 was dedicated July 3 at Indira Gandhi International Airport.

As India’s traffic grows and monsoon season starts, increasing the risk of accidents, Honeywell has offered its Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System to avoid controlled flight into terrain.

Responsible for managing the 2.8 million-sq.-nm Indian airspace, AAI controls all airborne operations. Having anticipated the traffic growth, AAI has installed the Air Traffic Service automation system in Delhi. The system has built-in capabilities, such as arrival manager, mediumterm conflict alert, minimum safe altitude warning, shortterm conflict alert and remote monitoring.

Reduction of horizontal separation to 50 nm from 80 nm has been planned on a trial basis under the ICAO regional office, starting in November. The reduction in separation will permit more flights at economic flight levels and increase the en route and terminal area control capacity, says AAI.

Performance based navigation procedures have been implemented at Delhi and Mumbai to structure traffic flow at the airports.

An Airport Surface Movement Guidance and Control System has also been installed at Delhi to help conduct safe Category II and III operations.

The current instrument landing system suffers from technical limitations, such as VHF interference, multi-path effects (due to new building works at and around airports), as well as ILS channel limitations. A Ground-Based Augmentation
System (GBAS) — a safety-critical system that augments the GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) and provides enhanced levels of service — at Delhi Airport
is planned by the year-end. The GBAS station will support multiple runway ends.

GBAS supports all phases of approach, landing, departure and surface operations within its area of coverage. GBAS is expected to play a key role in maintaining existing all-weather operations capability at Cat I, II and III airports. GBAS Cat I is seen as a necessary step toward the more stringent operations of Cat II/III precision approach and landing.

A new format of the Flight Plan (FPL) will be implemented by mid-November 2012 per the ICAO Regional Plan.

The new format is designed to meet the needs of aircraft with advanced capabilities and the evolving requirements of automated ATM systems.
-Neelam Mathews

No comments:

Post a Comment