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Journalism of Courage
MUMBAI, JULY 19: After delay of over one year and cost overruns of a couple of hundred crores, the new Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower and other systems set up at Mumbai airport under the ambitious Modernisation of Air Traffic Systems (MATS) project is set to be made operational in November.
Airports Authority of India (AAI) Regional Executive Director, Vikram K Kalra said that the AAI had last week taken over charge of all equipment set up by Raytheon systems, and the system would be made fully operational soon. The new system under the same project was made fully operational at Delhi airport on January 15, 1999.
“Though no definite time frame has been set to make the system operational, the only thing now remains to be done to switch operations from the existing system to the new one is the training of the 80-odd officers, which is at a very advanced stage. If everything goes according to plans, the new system will be entirely operational in the next four months,” Kalra said.
Highlighting theadvantages of the new system, Kalra said that most of the functions done manually by the ATCs would be fully automated, bringing down their work load to a considerable extent. The new systems will also enhance flight safety, even as the traffic handling capacity of the airport will go up from the current rate of 10-12 flights per hour to nearly 40 flights per hour.
“The ATCs on duty on the computer screen will be able to make a mental picture of all approaching and converging aircraft at a given point, their altitude, position etc. If anything goes wrong, or if any approach rule is broken, the system will set off a traffic conflict alert, giving ample time for the ATCs to contact the aircraft and get things under control,” Kalra added.
In fact, the state-of-the-art Monopulse Secondary Surveillance Radars (MSSR), will enable the ATCs to actually gauge all the readings and functioning of other gadgets inside the cockpit of a particular aircraft. The system architecture include Flight Data ProcessingSystem, Radar Data Processing System, Voice Communication Control System, Automatic Self Briefing System and the Airport Surface Detection Equipment.
The flight related facilities include Category I and II Instrument Landing System on the runways and eight VHF Omni Range (VOR) navigational aids for routing and gating of air traffic advanced flight management and improved traffic flows. Standard Instrument Departures and Standrad Terminal Arrival Routes have also been developed for a unidirectional configuration of incoming and outgoing traffic.
MATS was launched in 1993, with an original approved cost of Rs 209.76 crore with a foreign exchange component of Rs 162.05 crore, to revamp air traffic services at both Mumbai and Delhi airports. According to a directive from the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the new air traffic control towers, were supposed to be operational by March 1997 at Delhi and June 1998 at Mumbai.However, several unforeseen delays had led to escalation of the project cost to Rs 427.58 crorewith a foreign exchange component of Rs 266.48 crore.
