Chennai: Flights over the country and the Indian Ocean, from East Africa to Australia, will soon be safer, more economical and environment friendly with the Airports Authority of India (AAI) moving a step closer to installing a GPS-aided geo-augmented navigation system (Gagan) for commercial aircraft.
Once the system is operational, by late 2013 or early 2014, it will plug a hole in the global satellite-based aircraft navigation umbrella over a vast expanse through which aircraft had to fly with navigational coordinates and no real time geo-positioning.
The Rs 800 crore project, taken up by AAI, Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) and Raytheon, will take India into an exclusive club whose members possess the advanced system including the US, Japan and Europe.
"Fifteen reference and ground stations including one at Port Blair have been established and networked using high performance communication circuits. Signals from the satellite are being used to test for availability of standbys and other features of the network," said D Devaraj, southern regional executive director, AAI.
23/01/12 V Ayyappan/Times of India
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