Fog set to give airports wintry woes

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Keywords: india, aviation

New Delhi: If you are flying through Delhi between December and January this year, be ready to miss your appointments. In fact, this is going to be the scene all over North India as the fog season begins.

Delhi faces severe delays due to the fog every year, and this winter promises to be little different. Delhi International Airport is the only Indian airport equipped with the CAT IIIB instrument landing system, which allows for landing when visibility is up to 50 metres.

But just one of the two runways at the airport is equipped with the system. Of the 50 parking bays at the domestic terminal, only 10 are compatible with the CAT system.

The surface movement radar, part of the CAT system, which monitors the aircraft, will be operational only by mid-December. And when visibility drops below 50 metres, as it did twice last winter, this landing system is useless.

"We admit that there will be delays. Safety comes first nobody compromises with safety, " Ioannis Papastefanou, Chief Operating Officer with Delhi International Airport Limited, admits.

Apart from public carrier Indian, no other airline has pilots trained to land using the CAT 3B landing system. Airlines are training their pilots on Category 2 and 3 landing systems that allow landing at 350-metre visibility. But it takes about Rs 2 lakh and three to four years for a pilot to transit from CAT I to CAT III.

"The guidelines in India are even more stringent than international guidelines in terms of the number of hours each pilot is supposed to spend in the air. But we have over 80 per cent," Warwick Brady, Chief Operating Officer with Air Deccan, says.

Authorities at the Delhi International Airport say information will be key during the fog. They plan to set up a 24-hour Emergency Response Centre for information on delayed flights. Food counters and tents will be made available for waiting passengers.

As for your flights, chances of them taking off in time this winter season are very hazy.

With inputs from Deepa Balakrishnan