NEW DELHI: Flight delays on foggy days during the winter season are set to become a thing of the past at Kolkata's Netaji Subhash Chandra International Airport as one of its runways will become CAT-III compliant on both its ends from November 27. This upgradation will ensure that flights can land and take-off even during near zero visibility conditions at the airport.
Airport Director Vikram Singh told TNIE, " We have installed CAT-III facility on both side of our primary runway. In this runway, the end called 01R was already equipped to handle flights during extremely low visibility conditions six years ago. The other end 19L has also been upgraded now and will be declared CAT-III compliant from Thursday." The other runway is CAT-I compliant.
Annually, severe fog in the months of December to February cause flight delays. "With both ends of the runway now in a position to manage flights operations in poor visibility conditions, we hope to see no delays this winter," he said.
The pilots of flights too need to be trained to operate in a CAT-III environment. "Most airlines have incorporated this training for this pilots nowadays," the Director added.
The airport witnesses an average of 370 Air Traffic Movements (arrivals and departures) daily with nearly 70,000 passengers using the airport on a daily basis.
While domestic flights from here connect to most cities, it handles direct international flights to Singapore, Dubai, Thailand, Abu Dhabi and China.
Due to the closure of airspace for Indian aircraft by Pakistan for the last seven months, Air India flights from San Francisco and Vancouver also stop here for refuelling enroute their destinations.