Airport grounded as landing system kaput on 1st dense fog day

New Delhi All flight operations were stalled at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport for almost eight hours on Saturday morning on the season’s first date with dense fog.
Worse, the Instrument Landing System (ILS), which is supposed to facilitate flight operations during low-visibility conditions, become dysfunctional on the first day of Category-III dense fog on Delhi.
While the visibility was good enough for flights to land under Category-III conditions (when the runway visibility range is between 50 and 200 metres), the failure of Runway Visual Range (RVR) measurements led to chaos at the airport. Due to the technical snag, no flight could land or take off from midnight till 10 am on Saturday.
The situation took a turn for the worse again by 9.30 pm on Saturday as visibility dropped to 100 metres, stalling all operations at IGI, officials said.
A statement issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) earlier in the day said, “Working of RVR equipment on Runway 29 got affected due to damage to cables; RVR equipment for Runway 11 became unserviceable at 2.17 am and became usable only at 10.40 am.”
03/01/10 ExpressIndia

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Categories: Airports Jan 2010