The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Delay dogs airport ATC

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 19, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Delay dogs airport ATC

V. Sridhar

Flight simulator not ready yet

UPS required to power simulator yet to arrive
Controllers need 45 days’ training on simulator

Bangalore: The flight simulator at the new airport at Devanahalli remains idle because the Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) unit that powers it has not yet arrived. Sources at Bangalore International Airport told The Hindu that the UPS unit may take another “three or four days” to arrive. This means that the controllers at Air Traffic Control (ATC), which acts as the brain of an airport, will have to wait a little longer before they can use the equipment meaningfully.

Critical equipment

The air traffic controllers reiterated their contention that they would be ready to handle operations only 45 days after the simulator starts functioning. A senior controller said the simulator was critical at the new airport because it “is unlike any other airport in India”.

He pointed out that each controller has to be “rated”, which is location-specific. This means that every controller, however experienced he/she may be, has to be rated at the specific location they will man after training. “Since the Devanahalli airport is brand new, there are currently no controllers who are rated at this location.” Since there are no flight movements yet at Devanahalli, training on the simulator is the only way they can learn, he said.

The controllers said that several features peculiar to the new airport made their task more difficult.

For instance, one controller, posted here recently after a stint in Mumbai, said the air traffic at the two other airports in Bangalore — the HAL airport and the Indian Air Force station at Yelahanka — were likely to leave little “room for manoeuvre” while handling air traffic at Devanahalli. He said “adequate training on the simulator will ensure that we are better prepared”.

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