Planes look for a guiding light after smooth landing

Mumbai: The Mumbai airport is finding it difficult to provide light at the end of the landing routine for aircraft. Over the last two weeks, there have been more than 15 instances of taxiways of the airport being without lights.
Mumbai airport has around 22 taxiways. Lights on the edge of the taxiways help an aircraft to safely reach the parking bay from the runway after landing. Minus the edge lights to guide it, an aircraft runs the risk of missing the parking bay and taxing onto the grass nearby, outside the taxiway path. The problem becomes acute at night, and even more during heavy rains when the visibility is low.
On July 4, the tyre of a Saudi Airline flight burst as it taxied itself from the main runway 09-27 to taxiway N8 of the Mumbai airport. "The huge Boeing 747 aircraft normally uses N9 taxiway to vacate the runway. But that day it had to use taxiway N8 as there were no lights on taxiways N9 and N10," a source at the Mumbai airport said. Again, on July 3, the lights of taxiways N7, N8, N9 and N10 were not working due to a cable fault. And on July 10, the lights of taxiways N9 and N10 were not functioning from 8pm to 9pm.
And, on July 15, the central lights of the main runway 09-27 were not working.Sources said that taxiways have had problems with lights ever since construction work in the operational area of the airport started.
The spokesperson for Mumbai International Airport Limited said lights on the taxiways used to not function for a few hours in the last few days. "That problem has been rectified and all lights are operational," the spokesperson said. There was no impact on flight operations, he said.
17/07/09 Naveeta Singh/Daily News & Analysis

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Categories: Airports Jul 2009, Safety Jul 2009