Enhanced 'Air Traffic Service' at Delhi airport to ensure safety

A round the clock communication to ensure safety and accuracy at the ground and air. The world-class Air Traffic management, with better technology and coordination, at Delhi's Indira Gandhi airport makes it among the safest airports in the world.

"We have drawn plans to go in for upper area space harmonization which will bring in much more efficient use of air space efficient and safe besides we get straighter routes and lesser flying time of the aircraft which will reduce the CO2 emissions. Upper air space harmonization - we have already done at Chennai and Kolkata and for both, Mumbai and Delhi, it is in process," said Chairman, Airports Authority of India, S Raheja.

"Second technology which we are adopting that is again a next gen technology i.e. Central Air Traffic Flow Management which is primarily a real time monitoring of the aircrafts in the sky in which flights demands are taken into consideration viz-a-viz the capacity which is in the airspace viz-a-viz the capacity which is available at the airport," added Raheja.

ATS at Delhi airport manages over 1100 arrival and departure of aircraft every day. It has latest ATM Automation System which helps in profile monitoring, giving alerts, ground proximity warning and restricted airspace proximity warning.

The ATS is equipped with three local dual radars at Varanasi, Bhopal and Udaipur which are integrated with Automation system. Delhi ATS provides satellite based Communication and Surveillance through Automatic Dependent Surveillance and Controller Pilot Datalink Communication.

With this facility, ATS is capable of providing service to aircraft far away even beyond VHF Range.

"The moment the aircraft is being startup, a controller at control tower known as clearance delivery position gives startup to the aircraft and flight progress strip of their aircraft automatically printed and it goes to the next unit. From one unit it is coordinated through intercom to the next unit i.e, surface ground movement controller, who is responsible for ground movement of the aircraft, and brings it to the holding surface of the runway. Once the aircraft is ready for departure it is changed over to tower controller and tower controller after coordinating on intercom with other units known as approach controller or area controller which gives take-off clearance to the aircraft," said GM ATM (IGI Airport), A K Bhardwaj.

Delhi ATM Procedure Development team has evolved mixed mode of operations, where Arrivals and Departures of planes are allocated to the Runaway closest to their Terminal. This, in some cases, has reduced delays, saved craft fuel and curbed CO2 emission.