BHUBANESWAR: With frequent cancellation of flights due to bad weather at Veer Surendra Sai (VSS) Airport in Jharsuguda causing inconvenience to flyers, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has come forward to ensure flight regularity with changes in logistics.
The airport now operates under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) and a non-directional radio beacon (NDB) procedure. NDB is a radio transmitter used as an aviation or marine navigational aid.
Its signals follow the curvature of the earth so that they can be received at a much greater distance at lower altitudes. But, these signals are affected by atmospheric conditions, mountainous terrain, coastal refraction and thunderstorms, particularly at long range.
In order to overcome these hazards, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) plans to introduce Doppler Very High-Frequency Omni Range (DVOR) and Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) procedure in Jharsuguda airport, according to Ministry of Civil Aviation.
DVOR is a ground-based radio navigational aid that provides bearing information to aircraft to define air traffic control routes for en-route, terminal and instrument approach/departure procedures. DVOR, when collocated with DME, provides both the angle and slant distance of aircraft with respect to the ground station.
The Ministry also stated that the Instrument Landing System (ILS) equipment is under installation at VSS Airport. ILS is a precision runway approach aid based on two radio beams which together provide pilots both vertical and horizontal guidance during an approach to land.
VSS Airport was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 22 last year. There was a rise in passenger traffic at the airport after SpiceJet started operating daily direct flights from Jharsuguda to Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata from March 31.
Alliance Air, a wholly owned subsidiary of Air India, also started its operations between Biju Patnaik International Airport (BPIA) at Bhubaneswar and VSS Airport under Udan scheme on June 5. It also started operations between Raipur and Jharsuguda on the same day.