NEW DELHI: Delhi Airport authorities along with the Met department and Airports Authority of India have taken a slew of measures to minimise inconvenience to passengers and ensure continuity of flight operations during low visibility conditions during winters.
Apart from providing live flight information, regular updation on flight information display screens, provisions for more aircraft parking stands, equipped with aeronautical ground lighting system for CAT IIIB operations, pre-departure sequencing system for efficient flight operations, making available runway 09/27 for take offs during low visibility procedures (LVP), among others are some steps taken by DIAL to deal with the fog season.
"For the first time since taking over the airport, take offs from runway 09/27 with a visibility of 400 meters or more is possible," Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), chief executive officer I Prabhakara Rao said today.
DIAL is the joint venture company, which runs Delhi Airport.
Besides, MET office has installed 15 Runway visual range (RVR) devices at Delhi Airport and three new Drishti RVRs will soon arrive as reserve RVRs for Runway 10/28, he said.
"We aim to reduce delays and congestion due to fog, by devising a plan that would ensure smooth flow of flight information, almost on real time basis, to the passengers," Rao added.
The three runways 28, 29 and 11 at the IGI Airport are certified for CAT III B operations, which would allow landing of the compliant aircraft with visibility as low as 50 meters.
Delhi airport handles 1168 departures per day. On an average, it handles 35 arrivals and 49 departure per hour.
Over all this fog season, an additional (standby) seven RVR equipment will be available across the three runways which will help airport in better operations compared to last year, Marcel Hungerbuehler, DIAL COO, said.
"Looking at the success of Delhi Airport-Collaborative Decision Making (DA-CDM) in the last two years, we have introduced Pre-Departure Sequencing for this fog season. This will enable us to recover much faster at the time of flight disruption during low visibility condition," Rao said.
DA-CDM enhances our overall operational efficiency as it focuses on improving air traffic flow and capacity management at airports by reducing delays, improving the predictability of events and optimizing the utilization of resources.
It involves airport operators, airlines and ATC among other for collaborating and sharing data to increase airport's efficiency.