Chennai: Flying over Chennai airspace has become safer for international flights as air traffic controllers can now track them better over the Bay of Bengal.
In a bid to enhance safety and monitoring of planes better, Airports Authority of India (AAI) has bifurcated the oceanic airspace, spread over 4 lakh square nautical miles till the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, into west and east regions.
The airspace is crucial for global air connectivity because 400 planes cruise along 14 international routes connecting Europe to Australia and the Far East everyday, over an expansive water body where tracking planes is difficult. This traffic is in addition to the domestic traffic from Chennai and Kolkata to Port Blair.
Now, two dedicated teams of air traffic controllers will monitor planes flying in their respective regions so that they will not miss any flights in the airspace that is traffic-intense yet difficult to monitor because radar coverage is not efficient over such a vast area. The system will help overcome blind spots where air traffic controllers will not get signals showing movement of planes on their monitors.
11/01/16 Times of India
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In a bid to enhance safety and monitoring of planes better, Airports Authority of India (AAI) has bifurcated the oceanic airspace, spread over 4 lakh square nautical miles till the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, into west and east regions.
The airspace is crucial for global air connectivity because 400 planes cruise along 14 international routes connecting Europe to Australia and the Far East everyday, over an expansive water body where tracking planes is difficult. This traffic is in addition to the domestic traffic from Chennai and Kolkata to Port Blair.
Now, two dedicated teams of air traffic controllers will monitor planes flying in their respective regions so that they will not miss any flights in the airspace that is traffic-intense yet difficult to monitor because radar coverage is not efficient over such a vast area. The system will help overcome blind spots where air traffic controllers will not get signals showing movement of planes on their monitors.
11/01/16 Times of India
