Flight scare revives cry for gear & staff

Mumbai: Theoretically, a piece of equipment could have helped prevent the scare that rocked Mumbai airport on Sunday, when two flights prepared simultaneously for takeoff from intersecting runways.
The Surface Movement Radar (SMR) should already have been in service, its installation having been scheduled by April. Air traffic controllers — there aren’t enough of them in any case — would have used the SMR detect aircraft and vehicles on the surface instead of depending on the naked eye.
The SMR works as a typical video blip, overlaid onto a plan view of the airport showing features such as the runways and taxiways, grass areas and buildings. For an airport short of qualified radar controllers, it would have been an ideal supplement.
But the delay in installation means that the airport will go without it for yet another monsoon, the season when the country’s busiest airport needs it the most.
The airport deals with 650 to 680 departing and arriving traffic each day. Traffic volume has gone up 60 per cent in a decade. Such a huge increase in runway activity has seen the airport’s private developer build new taxiways.
Airport officials say there is a desperate need to enhance infrastructure and manpower. According to figures available with Newsline, it is a general trend across Indian airports to be short of radar controllers, who form the core of overall air traffic movements at airports.
02/05/09 Shashank Shekhar/Express India

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Airports Jun 2009, Safety Jun 2009