Delhi airport battles fog

New Delhi: Extreme weather like fog and rain often play spoilsport with flight schedules especially at Delhi and Mumbai, the country's busiest airports. In such conditions most passengers are lucky if they make it on time. But most end up with delays, or worse, cancelled flights.
But for Air Traffic Controllers responsible for guiding planes across the sky, adverse weather can be one of the biggest challenges.
"Every morning the ATC looks up at the sky and makes up his mind if it is going to be a tough day ahead," said D K Behra, General Secretary, ATC Guild of India.
Most aircraft require a minimum of 800 meters of visibility to make a safe landing. That would mean shutting down Delhi airport for several hours during foggy days when visibility falls below that.
But recently, the Capital got the advanced CAT3b landing system that allows planes to land even when visibility is just 50 meters.
Till recently, only Air India, Kingfisher and Indigo had the Cat 3b system and plilots were trained to use it. Recently, Jet airways also equipped some of its planes. But most planes flying in and out of the Capital still cannot use the system, which means a scramble when the weather clears.
27/12/08 Sidharth Pandey/NDTV.com

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Categories: Airports Dec 2008