The Hindu : Front Page : New bid to undo air traffic jams at Delhi airport

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 07, 2006

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New bid to undo air traffic jams at Delhi airport

Mandira Nayar

NEW DELHI: The long agonising delays at Delhi's international and domestic airports may soon be a thing of the past. To enhance its handling capacity, the Union Civil Aviation Ministry is planning to send air traffic controllers to Australia for training in simultaneous use of converging runways.

Promising good news for air passengers who have suffered for hours circling over the city because of acute air congestion, the new initiative will greatly increase the aircraft handling capacity at the two airports. "This training will help the air traffic controllers use two runways at the same time. Hopefully the training will start from April,'' says a senior official of the Air Traffic Controllers' Guild.

Faced with the fast worsening problem of congested skies, the limited use of the runway at one of the busiest airports in the country was clogging up air traffic quite a bit. The emergence of no-frills airlines and expanding services on various international and domestic circuits due to the boom in the aviation industry added to the congestion and led to a sudden lack of space both on the ground and in the sky.

However, officials now are confident that this new measure will deal effectively with the congestion and provide relief to airlines as well as passengers. It is also expected to lead to massive savings in terms of precious fuel that the aircraft of different airlines frequently burn while waiting for their turn to land or take off.

The Air Traffic Control at the moment can handle only 25 to 28 planes an hour at Delhi's domestic terminal. The new round of training will ensure that it will be able to handle the huge rush of planes without creating a backlog.

"The training will help make the second runway at the airport operational for departure. It will then take the number up to 40 planes per hour at the domestic terminal. After the training, the ATC will be able to use both the runways together. This will reduce congestion at both Mumbai and Delhi airports tremendously and bring a lot of relief to passengers,'' says civil aviation expert Kapil Kaul.

The plan to train the controllers comes hot on the heels of installation of the much talked about CAT III B landing system meant to help aircraft to land in low visibility conditions.

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