After PBN, Chennai airport to go for air traffic control automation

Chennai: After defining air routes for landing and take-off under the Performance Based Navigation (PBN) sytem, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has taken steps to introduce automation of air traffic control at the Chennai airport.
A meeting with representatives of US-based Raytheon, which bagged the Rs 42 crore contract to automate ATC, is scheduled in the coming days to discuss the details. "They will have to study the procedures used here and then design a system that can match ours," said a senior AAI official.
Like PBN, automation is crucial for the airport here because the traffic has crossed 400 aircraft a day. In Mumbai, PBN was installed when traffic touched 350 aircraft a day. So, an automated ATC system will ease the workload of controllers, improve air safety and make handling of aircraft in the congested air space easy.
Installing an automated ATC system, however, is going to be a long process. Raytheon's officials "will be working with air traffic controllers simultaneously to perfect automation before starting the training programmes and actual implementation," an official said. It is likely to take at least a year before the system becomes operational.
27/10/09 V Ayyappan/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Oct 2009, New Oct 2009