CHENNAI: The Chennai airport has become the second in India to start simultaneous operations from main runway and secondary runway after it launched trials on Thursday, according to Airport Authority of India general manager (air traffic management) Pradeep Kandoth.
Interestingly, Mumbai was the first airport which tried simultaneous operations but later aborted it as it was a crossing runway. In Chennai this is the second attempt and trials have been successful, said Kandoth. The initial move was started as early as 2007 but it was aborted due to technical reasons.
The move will enable the Chennai airport to expand its flight handling capacity to at least 40 to 42 flights an hour.
“We wanted the trials to be carried out from 7.30 am but due to visibility reasons we started the 55-minute trial operation between 10.28 hrs to 11.23 hours handling 22 aircraft. We handled eight departures from secondary runway, five from main runway and nine arrivals on main runway,” he said.
The trials will be implemented for a period of three months and after that permanent implementation will be considered. However, simultaneous operations of both aircraft will not be undertaken during the night.
The secondary runway will handle departures while the primary runway will handle both departures and arrivals. This will minimise the delay for departures and it will also reduce the conflicts in airspace.
By virtue of allocation of runways based on type and route, the track miles for the aircraft will also be reduced, he said.
Pradeep Kandoth said that once the work to straighten the ‘Bravo’ Taxiway is started, simultaneous operations on both runways will be limited from 7.30 am to 10.30 am in the morning only.
The Bravo Taxiway is straightened so that aircraft can proceed to the main runway faster. This is crucial as aircraft can cut down on fuel and reach the main runway quickly.