NEW DELHI: With dense smog disrupting air travel in a big way in North India and harried passengers blowing their top, aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday announced the setting up of war rooms by airports and airline operators at six metro cities to address the mess. The cities are Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Chennai. Sufficient CISF manpower will be made available round-the-clock at the airports, he added.
Scindia also informed that both ends of the lone CAT III runway at the moment at the Delhi International Airport have again become CAT III compliant. Runway 28/10, too, will be made CAT III-compliant after the process of re-carpeting, he said. CAT III or Category III is a type of instrument landing system (ILS) that allows airlines to operate under very low visibility conditions.
“RWY 29L at Delhi Airport has been made CAT III operational today (Tuesday). Operationalization of RWY 10/28 as CAT III at Delhi Airport after re-carpeting will also be undertaken,” said Scindia. The 29L end of the runway was downgraded to CAT I last week as large cranes deployed on the Dwarka Expressway were blocking CAT III signals.
As for runway 28/10, it has been closed since mid-September for re-carpeting. The delay in making it CAT III compliant was because work began only after the G20 Summit. The delay was also attributed to the imposition of GRAP IV measures (bar on construction work to curb pollution) in Delhi.
As the fog situation this year was the worst in five years and visibility dropped to such an extent that the CAT III mechanism became ineffective, more than 1,200 outbound flights from the Delhi Airport faced delays between Sunday and Tuesday with over 200 getting cancelled. The delay was also due to shortage of pilots trained to operate in low visibility.