Chaos at Mumbai airport: Converging jets highlight woes

Mumbai: Two aircraft converging at Mumbai airport on Thursday may not have led to a collision or brush of wings, but the incident has revealed the chaos that reigns at one of the busiest international airports in the country.
Many parking bays-both for domestic and international flights-are not visible to the ground traffic controllers from the tower. Small building structures within the airport operational area bar the view that a tower may otherwise offer to gauge the movement of aircraft on ground. "Recently, when an Air India and Kingfisher flight were taxiing towards a point of conflict, the controller had no way to gauge the exact location of the latter as parking bay Lima is way beyond the eye-shot of ground control. All communication took place through ground frequency only,'' a senior airport official said. "Lack of a precise idea of the location of the aircraft on ground makes it difficult to aid movement in such situations.''
While the new bay, Lima, is plagued by invisibility for parked domestic flights, several parking lots for international aircraft are also riddled with such problems.
"There are wide-bodied aircraft moving around, particularly during the night. Domestic traffic persists all through the day. Aircraft are given a push-back call one after the other so that they can queue up for departure. Flights keep arriving every two minutes in the peak hour. In such a bustling scene, the controllers are only left to imagine the location and the movement of aircraft,'' an air traffic control (ATC) official said.
02/11/09 Chinmayi Shalya/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Nov 2009, Safety Nov 2009