AAI slips on navigation aid; may hold up MATS

According to sources involved with the MATS project at Mumbai, the navigational aid at Sinnar is situated in a spot surrounded by hills, and has failed to show results during preliminary trials. As a result, the AAI may have to do without one of the key features of MATS, even after the new air traffic control tower is made operational at Mumbai.

“While the planning of the project began way back in 1982, and the project implementation was finally handed over to Raytheon in the early 1990s, nobody in the AAI top brass realised that the hills around Sinnar would prevent satellite signals from reaching the navigational equipment,” sources told The Indian Express.

What is more alarming is that even Raytheon engineers who were in the country as part of the planning process, instead of objecting to the site, believed it would be a strategically ideal place to set up the navigational equipment, sources added.

The problem was noticed when the trials on the equipment began recently. While the other three navigational aids set up at Mandvi, Sahabad and Kalamb worked as expected, the one at Sinnar completely failed to respond to any satellite signal or even digital signals from aircraft hovering right above it.

However, in a drastic attempt to rectify the goof-up, the management is thinking of transferring the entire equipment to another place, though none has been selected so far. “After realising that they have put the horse in front of the carriage, the AAI management is now planning to set things straight. Never mind that uprooting the delicate state-of-the-art equipment and placing it at another place would cost several lakh of rupees,” sources pointed out.

According to experts, the navigational aids are expected to ease traffic congestion over the country’s busiest, Mumbai airport, as aircraft circling over the city airport during peak traffic hours for a landing slot could be scattered to these places till they could be called in to land. However, with the failure of the equipment at Sinnar, the efficiency of MATS would be considerably reduced, they lamented.

The original estimated cost of MATS of about Rs 350 crore, has already shot up to over Rs 600 crore due to delays. While the new control tower at Delhi airport was handed over to the AAI and began operations since January 15, the one at Mumbai will not be able to function for at least another year.

One of the main problems of making the control tower operational at Mumbai is a severe shortage of trained manpower including that of technical officers to maintain the navigational aids and radars, and the Air Traffic Controllers, who will actually man the control tower.