Mumbai airport, a disaster in waiting

Mumbai: The Mumbai airport, handling nearly 25 million passengers and close to 700 flights, is turning into a potential dangerous airport with the Air Traffic Control (ATC) stressed out due to shortage of staff and upgraded equipment. In the past few months, the situation have reached to such a dangerous magnitude that they could have turned into a major disaster.
A few weeks ago a major air accident was averted since the ATC had allowed a Kingfisher flight to land when a Spice Jet flight was cleared to take off and was taxing on the runway.
A month ago, a similar situation had developed when a Jet Airways flight was asked to abort landing at the last minute after an IndiGo aircraft entered the runway. Both the flights had been given a go ahead by the ATC.
On Tuesday, last, another critical situation had developed when ATC lost control of over 19 aircraft for over 21 minutes since there was a blackout due to system failure. Even the back up power system failed and the ATC had to rely on portable batteries to power the systems.
19/06/10 Rommel Rodrigues/ExpressBuzz

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Airports Jun 2010, Safety Jun 2010