IGI crashes on radar blip

200 flights disrupted for over 3 hours.

In an unprecedented breakdown, the radar system of Air Traffic Control (ATC) at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport stopped working for more than an hour this evening, delaying at least 200 flights by up to three hours.

According to late night reports, the traffic at the airport was expected to stay out of gear till one in the morning.

The airport, which has passed into the hands of a private sector consortium led by GMR, is gearing up to handle 60 million passengers a year from July, up from 23 million now. But it has not been having a very smooth run. With the onset of the monsoon last year, a new terminal building, built at a cost of Rs 500 crore, leaked on several occasions. On August 21, flights had to be shut for nearly two hours after a downpour that lasted 30 minutes.

On January 2 this year, incidentally the first day of fog in the capital, operations at the airport went haywire as the Runway Visual Range (RVR) system stopped functioning. RVR system aids ATC on the condition of the runways. Even though visibility levels at 100 metres allowed operations under CAT III system, which exists at IGI, the failure of RVR led to shut down of operations for around 8 hours. The RVR system is managed by the meteorological department.

Today, while ATC executives said that about 30 arrivals happened during the radar crash and no departures were allowed, airlines said not a single flight either landed at the airport or departed.

“At 6 pm, Auto Track 2 (the radar system) of the Delhi ATC (Air Traffic Controller) crashed, which led to delays in arrival and departure of flights though the procedure was immediately transferred to the manual system,” said D S Raghavan, president, Air Traffic Controllers’ Guild.

“Departure of our flights was delayed by 2 hours,” said Aditya Ghosh, president, IndiGo Airlines. Added a spokesperson of Kingfisher Airlines: “About 20 out of the 27 flights in Delhi got delayed. During the snag, about five of our flights could not land.”

“Things started functioning by 7.30 pm and was normal by 9 pm,” said Raghavan.

Sources said Auto Track 2, the air navigation system, was being upgraded to more advanced Auto Track III, which might have led to the crash. “When the existing system failed, we shifted to the advanced Auto Track III, which is being shadow tested for the past six months,” said an ATC source.

Generally, during peak hours — especially when the radar crashed —ATC handles over 35-40 aircraft movements in an hour.

“From 5.45 pm to 6.45 pm, around 30 flights arrived without much delay,” said Raghavan, adding that the system was restored by 7.30 pm and operations were expected to be normal by 1 am.