New rules to take off for air safety

Mumbai: An increased incidence of near-misses and runway incursions at the Mumbai airport has finally nudged the Directorate General of Civil Aviation into action.
After a Jetlite flight and an Indigo aircraft nearly collided with each other last week, the DGCA set down a few new rules or Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to be followed at the city airport. The recommendations on the draft, which will soon be implemented, was sanctioned by the DGCA’s air-safety department on Friday evening.
“Mumbai has had a series of near-misses. Runway incursions have also beem frequent, though not as risky as the one last week. Taxiway and runway lights have also posed trouble in the past few months. To add to all this, the recent Mangalore crash has made officials realise how vulnerable our airports are. This is why the DGCA has asked the airport operator to come up with the new rules,’’ an official said. The rule that tops the index directs airport officials—both belonging to the Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd (MIAL) and Air Traffic Control (ATC)—should list out the “hotspots on the runway that are prone to incursions’’.
Directorate-general Naseem Zaidi told TOI that a set of SOPs has been sanctioned to identify the glitches at the airport and the corrective as well as preventive steps that should be taken.
31/05/10 Chinmayi Shalya/Times of India

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Categories: Safety May 2010