Aerospace Diary

Neelam Mathews Jan 17, 2019 A s aviation infrastructure development lags behind India’s highly competitive and rapidly growing aviation market, the industry is getting a positive response from the international community looking for opportunities to invest in ground, air, and space infrastructure. Such feedback proved particularly evident at the first Global Aviation Summit in Mumbai on January 15 and 16, attended by a mix of more than 1,200 participants from 80 countries, including the chiefs of the International Air Transport Association, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and Airports Council International. “In order for India cope with surging demand in air transport, a clear plan for building critical aviation infrastructure is required,” said Angela Gittens, director general of Airports Council International (ACI) World. “With that in mind, it is good to see that the Indian government has moved to undertake a second phase of privatization.” Gittens’ call...

Jane's Airport Review Neelam Mathews 11-Sep-2017 The Airports Authority of  India  (AAI) is looking at the viability of investing in digital towers. An expression of interest document will be..... Read more in Jane's Subscription 1 Could the new ATC tower at Delhi (pictured left, next to the old tower) be supplemented by a remote facility for contingency services? ( Neelam   Mathews )

Neelam Mathews , Delhi 26-May-2017 Jane's Airport Review Mumbai (pictured) is one of five large Indian airports to undergo noise-mapping. (Neelam Mathews) I ndia  is prioritising moves to limit noise emissions at airports and standardise land use planning, as it prepares for an ICAO audit in November 2017. ICAO Doc 9289 (Balanced Approach to Noise Management) calls for member states to introduce noise limit guidelines and land use plans by 2018. The Indian National Physical Laboratory (NPL) ....more in JAR.

Neelam Mathews Apr 1, 2016 NEW DELHI: A few years ago a passenger on an Indian budget carrier caused an uproar on learning that the captain was a woman. “I don’t want to die. She can’t take care of the house, how will she take care of a plane?” he  reportedly yelled . Rightfully, he was deplaned. While his knuckle-dragging tribe may have decreased trivially since then, one wonders what the passenger’s reaction would have been if he knew the captain was pregnant. One would assume he would have been scandalized that she had deigned to fly. While Qatar Airways  last year changed its draconian restrictions  on cabin crew concerning marriage and pregnancy, in India the discussion is focused on when the pilot should stop flying when pregnant. Nivedita Bhasin, the third woman pilot to join then government-owned Indian Airlines, now part of Air India, has two children, both pilots. In the last 30 years, she said, the pilot ...

Neelam Mathews and Ben Vogel Dec 3 2015 US -based PrecisionHawk (PH) is building a low altitude tracking and avoidance system (LATAS) as a solution for safe air traffic management (ATM) of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS). PH is developing LATAS in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), NASA, and major industry partners Verizon, Harris, and DigitalGlobe. The aim is for LATAS to enable pilots of manned aircraft to pinpoint the location of unmanned aircraft in the airspace before they become a safety hazard. 1644271 Could LATAS assuage FAA concerns over RPAS safety? (PrecisionHawk) LATAS is being assessed in the FAA Pathfinder programme and the NASA-led UAS Traffic Management (UTM) project. PH is working with NASA and other partners to test a wide range of RPAS in real-world scenarios. As NASA continues to develop a workable UTM, LATAS will have the potential to serve as the hardware addition for each drone attached to that overarchin...

By  Neelam Mathews   Dec 7, 2015 ICAO secretary general Fang Liu (left) and Airports Council International director general Angela Gittens both warned that airport capacity is not keeping up with traffic growth rates in the Asia Pacific region. [Photo: Neelam Mathews] The Airports Council International ( ACI ) and the International Civil Aviation Organization ( ICAO ) have joined forces to call for substantial development of airport infrastructure across the Asia Pacific region, and improvements in the way airports are regulated. In a conference held in the Indian capital New Delhi from December 2-4,  ACI  reported that passenger traffic is now growing at around 6.5 percent annually across the region and argued that regulators cannot hope to manage this growth effectively with regulatory constraints on traffic levels. “ Many airports in China and India continue to report significant gains in year-over-year passenger numbers. Shanghai and New Del...

 by Neelam Mathews  - December 1, 2015, 10:00 AM Some Asian airlines have had their operations inhibited by restrictions imposed by U.S. and European authorities over concerns about alleged poor safety oversight by their national aviation authorities. [Photo: Neelam Mathews} As Asia Pacific airlines experience strong passenger growth, the region continues to face a host of diverse challenges, not least of which involves effective safety oversight. At the recent Association of Asia Pacific Airlines ( AAPA ) annual 59th Assembly of Presidents in Bali, delegates also called on governments to boost infrastructure investment, simplify passenger facilitation and moderate consumer rights legislation. But perhaps the foremost concern centered on what   AAPA   director general Andrew Herdman characterized as a heavy handed regulatory approach by world aviation bodies toward airlines whose countries’ aviation authorities do not meet international standards. A...

Neelam Mathews June 4 2015   Psychologist: “How will you handle a pax if he is unruly inflight?’ Trainee Pilot: “I will follow all Standard Operating Procedures.” Psy: “What if the airline has no SOPs?” TP: “I’ll then ask the lead crew to be assertive.” Psy: “What if the unruly pax is a VIP?” TP: “I will warn him and ask male crew to help me isolate him in the cabin. Psy: “Suppose if there is no male crew…?” And the psychologist went on to ask the trainee not only the rules regarding the alcohol limit for passengers, but under what section/page it appears in the regulator’s rule book. Frankly, if an airline has no SOPs  to handle unruly passengers , it has no business being in business. But that’s beside the point. The conversation above is a snippet from a recent 10-20 minute “psychometric test” carried out for the first time by national carrier Air India and an Indian Air Force psychologist on young aspirant pilots applying for jobs at t...

ATC Neelam Mathews   - IHS Jane's Airport Review 30 April 2015     A380-800 in Singapore Airlines (SIA) livery. SIA and Malaysia Airlines are the first carriers to adopt the SITA OnAir AIRCOM Flight Tracker. Source: SIA Malaysia Airlines (MAS) and Singapore Airlines (SIA) will implement global flight tracking using SITA OnAir's AIRCOM Flight Tracker, starting in mid-2015. The system will be rolled-out across their entire fleet. SITA made a conscious decision to focus only on a couple of airlines for the trials in order to bring the solution to the market quickly. In pursuit of this objective it worked closely with SIA and MAS,  IHS Jane's  learned. The trial period helped overcome challenges in collaboration and coordination between the two partners and in the two airlines identifying their specific requirements. While SITA is in talks with other airlines in the region, the decision to identify Asian carriers was a natural corollary to ...

Neelam Mathews A lot of water has flown with speculations galore since the unfortunate crash of AirAsia A320-200 QZ8501, an airline with a decade-old accident-free record. However, it has stirred up long-standing issues that are unfortunately only raked up when attention is drawn by tragedies such as this. One such issue is the urgent need for tracking guidelines that seem to be caught in a quagmire of vacillation by world bodies responsible for aviation health. This nightmare has also exposed the insularity and arrogance of governments. Why, for instance, were SAR operations not started immediately once the plane went off the radar? Yes, the weather was bad and still is. As an aviation safety expert said,this attitude “is unpardonable.” Having faced the nightmare of MH370, one would have thought that as soon as contact was lost with the aircraft, there would be alarm bells ringing. Call it geo-politics or egos, everybody seemed to be waiting for the other to ask or offer hel...

Neelam Mathews Dec 3, 2014 Steeped in the heat of intense competition, Asia-Pacific airlines must now confront additional challenges related to safety and health pandemics. With the loss of Malaysia Airlines flights  MH 370  and  MH 17  earlier this year, it came as no surprise that safety became the prime focus at the recent 58th Assembly of Presidents of Association of Asia Pacific Airlines ( AAPA ) in Tokyo. The 16-member  AAPA , which recently added Air Astana to its membership base, articulates views on common areas of interest of airlines in the region that jointly fly 5,911 aircraft, carrying 31 percent of global passenger traffic and generating $163 billion in annual revenues. “ AAPA  urges governments to improve efforts in the sharing of accurate intelligence and information related to flight safety on a global basis and to support the development of an augmented distribution system for the enhanced sharing of conflict zone ri...

ABACE CONVENTION NEWS  »  2014 by    NEELAM MATHEWS April 10, 2014, 3:30 PM In its recommendations for improving general aviation in India, an  ICAO -led group has recommended to India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation ( DGCA ) include: Fully implementing a safety management system and ensure the industry is fully compliant; hiring and training sufficient qualified technical and administrative staff to carry out its obligations, and removing the pilot experience requirements for nonscheduled operators that require 500 hours, including 25 hours in type.

ABACE CONVENTION NEWS  »  2014 by    NEELAM MATHEWS With the lack of fixed-base operators in the country, general aviation aircraft experience congested parking at Delhi International Airport. April 10, 2014, 3:15 PM With general aviation regulations in India caught up in a web of complex rules, the industry has expressed a need for a stable regulatory framework that would allow it to grow in a sound, more straightforward regulatory regime. Addressing this, an  ICAO -led group drafted a set of recommendations for a policy on general aviation–including fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and seaplanes–and submitted them to the Ministry of Civil Aviation in April 2012. While no action has been takenas a consequence of changes in leadership over the past few months, 2014 could bring in good tidings, Rohit Kapur, president, Business Aviation Operators Association ( BAOA ) told  AIN . In addition, hopes are high, he said, that...