Air travel to become shorter, greener

Kolkata: Do you find it annoying to fly into Delhi and Mumbai where planes have to hover in the sky, waiting in a seemingly endless queue for touchdown? Ever wondered why this doesn't happen at London, Dubai, Frankfurt or Newark despite the airports catering to many more flights?
It's because flights to busy airports are required to calculate backwards to determine the takeoff time that will make the entire journey short. In contrast, domestic flights in India are happy taking off on time with no care in the world on the prolonged wait that may follow. Beyond mere inconvenience to passengers, it also entails wastage of aviation turbine fuel worth crores of rupees as planes hover in the air or wait in takeoff queue.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation ( DGCA) seems to have finally woken up to the problem and is taking steps to address the situation that not only cuts down on flight time but also reduces fuel consumption, thereby cutting down on carbon emission.
"The Indian aviation industry has to adopt Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) to solve the gridlock in Mumbai and Delhi. A system should be in place within the next 12-18 months," Airports Authority of India general manager (air traffic management) Chandan Sen told TOI. There are two primary contenders for delivering the software that will integrate all the information-American NextGen and European SESAR.
"Once the system is in place, flight-related information will flow seamlessly across all stakeholders. There is requirement of collaborative decision-making between air traffic, airport managers and airlines to enable the system to function properly. After all the relevant information is fed into the system, it can determine what time passengers on a Kolkata-Mumbai flight should board the aircraft so that there is least amount of waiting time both for takeoff in Kolkata and for landing in Mumbai," Sen explained. This can lead to an annual saving of 6 million kg of ATF costing around Rs 40 crore and reduce carbon emission by 18 million kg.
22/10/11 Suhbro Niyogi/Times of India

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Categories: airports Oct 2011, Indian Aviation- In General Oct 2011, New Oct 2011