No cancelation of flights from Chandigarh Airport, equipped to tackle Foggy conditions now
H S Bhatti
Mohali , November 16, 2019 :
The biggest achievement for the CHIAL is to become 24 hours operational after installing all the relevant facilities at the Chandigarh airport to support night operations.
The latest one is the up gradation the facilities of the Airport to CAT-II, due to which it is now possible to operate flights in the visibility upto 800 meters. NOTAM of this information is already published.
This up gradation will further reduce this number of cancellations of flights to almost nil during foggy weather during winter.
Disclosing this here today, CEO, CHIAL Mr Suneel Dutt said that as per the CAT-I ILS Category which was available in the last winter season it was possible to operate flights upto the visibility of 1200 meters i.e. RVR - Runway Visibility Range which is basically the visibility on the Runway itself.
There were almost 3-4 cancellations of flights in the last winter season due to intense fog and severely low fog.
CEO Suneel Dutt ( Extreme Right ), handing over the boarding pass to a lady passenger for Chandigarh -Dharamshala flight started from Nov 16
He said that if the visibility reduces beyond RVR value of 800 meters, we have arranged Follow Me service which will guide the aircraft from the Runway to Bay or vice-versa to avoid any kind of inconvenience or halt of operations.
"Generally, for CAT-I ILS operations, one RVR instrument is installed to calculate visibility on the Runway. Similarly, for CAT-II operations, two RVR instruments are installed at the middle of the Runway and at the end of the Runway. However, three number of RVRs are installed at Chandigarh which enhances the accuracy of the CAT-II ILS system which make the Chandigarh Airport more safer than the other CAT-II compliant airports in India. These RVR Instruments are designed and installed by Drishti which is a well known Indian Company, which helped us to achieve the dream of 'Make in India', CEO added.
Low Visibility Take Off operations commonly known as LVTO i.e. departure of flights from Chandigarh Airport can now be executed in the Runway Visibilty Range as low as upto 125 meters, which states that there will be negligible delay in the departure flights.
Mr Dutt further told , "We have intimated the Airports Authority of India that our Airport is upgraded to CAT-II ILS operations, thus, Chandigarh Airport can be used an alternate aerodrome/airport to handle any diverted flights from the nearby airports i.e IGI Airport, Amritsar Airport, Srinagar Airport etc. during the dense fog season. We are also increasing number of bays at Chandigarh Airport, which will help us to park about 15 aircraft at the Apron and if needed more number of flights can be parked at our taxiways."
He said that there can be nominal delays during the arrival or departures of the flights which totally depend upon the weather conditions at origin or destination stations, or the weather conditions at Chandigarh. After the installation of CAT-II ILS system, these delays will further be minimized.
Considering the CAT-II ILS system, there is no change in the schedule of the flights, as most of the airlines changed their operation timings during last season to avoid dense fog conditions. The up gradation of the ILS system has made us as well as airlines more confident to operate their flights as per their planning and at any time of the day or night. On the contrary, we have increased the number of flights in the winter schedule. In the last winter season there was no flight operations before 10 AM, but after the upgradation, we will now be operating flights right from 6 AM in the morning. We are in regular contact with all the airlines, as more number of flights can be added during the night hours in this winter season itself.
Mr Dutt also told "We are sharing visibility data of previous years at Chandigarh which makes us more confident that the current upgradation to CAT-II ILS system wil have almost insignificant impact on the aircraft operations.
Moreover, the length of the Runway is increased to 10,400 meters as well its re-surfacing has enhanced the performance of operations at Chandigarh Airport.
We are aiming to upgrade our airport further so that there would not be single cancellation of flights due to dense fog in the next winter season."