APAI seeks all airports to be CAT-IIIB compliant to avoid

Air passengers' body APAI on Tuesday urged aviation regulator DGCA to make all airports and aircraft CAT-IIIB compliant and also work on implementing CAT-IIIC landing procedure at major aerodromes going forward. In a letter to civil aviation secretary and director- general of civil aviation (DGCA) ahead of the foggy season, Air Passengers Association of India (APAI) founder and national president D Sudhakara Reddy said that to blame fog and low-quality air as an "Act of God" is the most deplorable excuse for causing delays when technology has provided solutions for addressing these eventualities.

CAT III-B instrument landing system lets aircraft land with Runway Visual Range (RVR) of up to 50 meters with a decision height of 15m. At present, Delhi, Kolkata, Lucknow and Jaipur airports are CAT-IIIB compliant.

"Fog is only one side of the story. A few days back, as many as 37 aircrafts operating out of Delhi were diverted due to a severe decline in visibility to places like Jaipur, Amritsar and Lucknow. "More than 250 departures and 300 arrivals were delayed and 19 flights were cancelled affecting thousands of flyers due to poor visibility for various reasons," Reddy said.

The state-of-the-art CAT III-B system can help landings and take-offs even in low visibility with the help of radio signals and high-intensity lighting arrays, he said adding, the world over such technologies are effectively used to ensure smooth landing during poor visibility situations. "Our take is that DGCA should make CAT III-B compliance mandatory for all airports and aircraft. Also, it should be the endeavor to move towards CAT III-C system that allows landing in near-zero visibility atleast in major airports, where fog is a perennial issue," Reddy said in the letter.

This is critically important for Indian airports to join the league of aerodromes like New York JFK and London Heathrow, he added. "India being the third-largest aviation market globally, investment to beef up facilities is a must and should be done in a time-bound manner," Reddy stated.

He said the Delhi airport last year on December 7, delayed as many as 362 flights besides cancelling another 38 on account of inclement weather. Ironically, this had happened the very next day when the airport operator DIAL boasted that it was fully equipped to handle flight operations during a dense fog, the letter said.

Then again on the Christmas Day, 200 flights were delayed due to poor visibility, as per APAI. The Delhi airport handles close to 1,400 flights on an average per day.

"One can safely assume on a fog-hit day, on an average, close to 35 per cent of the flights are either delayed or cancelled. This would affect thousands of air passengers on a pan-India basis since passengers travelling from and to Delhi would get affected by the delays and cancellations," Reddy said in the letter..