Blank ATC blinds pilots

Faulty communication equipment had compromised aviation safety during the foggiest two days of the season so far, cutting off around 500 aircraft flying along a southern stretch under the city airport’s surveillance.
A veteran pilot who had to navigate his way through an 180-nautical mile stretch between Bhubaneswar and Visakhapatnam without the air traffic control’s assistance described the experience as “flying blindfolded”.
Fliers aboard those 500 aircraft, many of them overflying Calcutta, had no inkling of the communication failure but the pilots were in a tizzy, sources said.
“Air traffic control could see the planes on the radar but failed to communicate with the pilots because of a technical problem in the VHF equipment on both Friday and Saturday. Fortunately, nothing untoward happened,” said an airport official.
For the pilots who were on their own during the 30 minutes that it takes to cover the Bhubaneswar-Visakhapatnam stretch, this was not the first time that faulty communication equipment at the city airport had let them down.
“This has been going on for the past 15 years and yet there is no sign of improvement,” complained the pilot of a Calcutta-Chennai Jet Airways flight on Saturday.
The city airport has seven pieces of VHF equipment for communication with aircraft on various routes, including ones on the ground and those about to land.
“The one that is used for communication on the stretch between Bhubaneswar and Visakhapatnam was creating problems on Friday and Saturday, when the density of fog was the thickest. Even when communication was possible, the voices were distorted. It has since been repaired, ” an official said.
An engineer revealed that the VHF equipment hadn’t been upgraded in more than a decade.
17/01/11 The Telegraph

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Categories: Airports Jan 2011, Safety Jan 2011