Chaos at Chennai airport after radar shutdown

Chennai: Though Airports Authority of India (AAI) issued an advance notice to airmen (NOTAM) about the shutdown of radars for maintenance, aircraft operations to and from Chennai airport plunged into chaos after airlines refused to stagger their operations. As arrivals suffered delays ranging from 10 minutes to two hours, visitors thronged the terminals.
Three incoming flights were diverted. Indian Airlines’ Port Blair-Chennai flight was diverted to Bangalore, Deccan’s Kolkata-Chennai to Coimbatore and Jet Airways Kolkata-Chennai to Hyderabad.
The airport could handle only about 100 operations as against the 140 operations it normally does during the forenoon peak hour everyday.
Air traffic controllers worked on a contingency plan to minimise the delays. Amidst rising stress level, they called up pilots of approaching aircraft, got their position and level, plotted the aircraft movement on a chart paper, directed the flights to hover one over the other over Kancheepuram and cleared the ones at the bottom rung to make an approach to land at the Pallavaram end of the primary runway.
27/04/08 V Ayyappan/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Apr 2008, Safety Apr 2008