ATC told to use discretion in allotting runways

New Delhi: On Friday, even though visibility fell below 50 m for several hours and low visibility procedures (LVP) were in place, morning at the
IGI airport was relatively peaceful. This is because the fog lifted by early morning and LVP was discontinued after a 9 hour stint at 7.55 am. Most operations before 6 am are international and domestic schedules were disturbed only slightly. However, there were still several delays throughout the day with international flights being affected the most.
After Thursday's chaos, where several flights were cancelled and arrivals had to hover over Delhi for close to two hours in several cases, the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) assessed the situation. DGCA chief Naseem Zaidi told Times City that while the new runway was totally CAT-III compliant, pilots had often been asking to land on the main runway. "We have asked the air traffic control to apply their judgment now in giving permission to land. They will ask pilots if they are compliant for a particular landing and then use their discretion in allotting runways,'' he said. The winter schedule had been drawn keeping in mind the new runway would handle all CAT-III landings. With some pilots preferring the older runway, the schedules were going haywire.
Zaidi added that an airline, that did not have the requisite data for landing fed in its database, was also leading to delays.
On Thursday, due to falling visibility, LVP was enforced at 11.07 pm. During the period, a little less than 100 flights operated. However, there were as many as 13 cancellations. Airlines clarified, that several of these were only combined flights.
Another airline official explained even though the passenger load should have improved by now, with holiday-goers returning home, they were not expecting any changes till the middle of the next week.
03/01/09 Neha Lalchandani/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jan 2009