CAT I system in rest of India fails to tackle low visibility.
The lack of CAT II and CAT III instrument landing systems (ILS) in airports has forced airlines to delay or cancel flights in Delhi and other leading airports of the country. ILS helps aircraft to take off and land in low visibility.
Delhi is the only airport with CAT III landing system. All other airports across the country have the basic CAT I facility, except Kolkata, which has CAT II.
CAT I landing system can facilitate landing and take off if the visibility is up to 550 metres. But it is not enough for the northern as well as the eastern parts of the country, which are reeling under severe winter and fog. In most of the cities, visibility falls to less than 100 metres, requiring CAT III, which allows take- offs at visibility of as low as 50 metres. CAT II facilitates operations at visibility of 350 metres and above.
Airlines say poor weather and low visibility in Jaipur, Chandigarh, Patna, Lucknow, Amritsar, Varanasi, Agartala, Shillong and even Bangalore have had its fallout on the flights to and from Delhi.
Says Aditya Ghosh, president of low-cost airline IndiGo, “The reason for flight disruption is not Delhi, which is CAT III complaint, but cities like Jaipur, Patna and Lucknow. They have poor visibility. Delayed flights from these locations has had a cascading effect across cities like Delhi and other metros.”
“The delays are mainly because of fog at the airports in smaller towns of North and East India,” says Ajay Singh, director, SpiceJet.
A similar view is echoed by state-owned carrier Air India. “The delays have not been due to fog in Delhi. They are consequential delays, which mean flights are getting held up due to fog at Patna, Lucknow and Varanasi,” says an Air India spokesperson.
In Delhi, which saw one of the worst fog of the season today, airlines cancelled 34 flights and rescheduled 11 out of a total 256 flights which operated in low visibility. It could have been worse had it not been for the fact that nearly half the flights that entered Delhi airport used either CAT III or CAT II advanced ILS (101 flights used CAT III and 22 flights used CAT II) at the airport.
Most of the other flights, which were delayed or cancelled, were reaching from other cities where visibility was low.
Airlines say that in Chandigarh, the ILS has been declared unserviceable by the authorities. As a result, the three operators — Kingfisher, Jet Airways and Air India — have cancelled their flights to and from the city. Airlines also say that they have had to call back flights trying to land in Bangalore because of poor visibility. A plea for an advanced ILS system for the newly-built international airport has not been heeded.
“We have cancelled out flights to Chandigarh as aircraft cannot land there. Also, in Bangalore, there are reports of flights not being able to land due to poor visibility,” says an executive of Kingfisher Airlines.
Adds a senior executive of another leading airliner, “We are suffering due to differences between the private airport operators and the government, as they are unwilling to spend to put the advanced ILS in place.”
Airlines say there is no shortage of CAT III compliant pilots, which is one of the reasons why flights got cancelled earlier, as most airlines have invested money on training. The total number of CAT III trained pilots in the country is 1,323 for 206 aircraft, which is sufficient for the industry and the duration of fog, says an industry expert.
Airports Authority of India (AAI), which manages many of the small airports across the country, say that they have moved ahead with upgrading ILS at some airports. “The installation of CAT II instrument landing system at the Lucknow and Amritsar airports have been delayed because of non availability of land. The state governments are not taking interest,” says a top AAI official.
“Chandigarh is an Indian Air Force airport and they have recently given us the job to upgrade the ILS. The plans to upgrade the ILS at Jaipur is stuck due to paucity of funds,” he adds.
