Mumbai Airport is now equipped with a new traffic management system that will allow the take-off and landing of flights more quickly. Old system in place, kept flights circling in the sky waiting for the ground clearance. The new traffic management system will allow the planes to land as well as take off with a gap of just 80 seconds. This means, the passengers will no more have to stay for long hours strapped to their seats while waiting for a ground clearance.
The new system requires flawless communication between the pilot and the ground control and also between the pilots of the two flights involved. The new traffic management system was tried since May 2016 and had been on a test run since nine months. The system has been applied since March 1, 2017. It is also known as the landing clearance system and a big challenge was to save seconds to reduce the waiting period and also keeping the safety mechanism at the same time.
Every move was then well placed and the anticipated time gap between the two flights had to be accurate. So when a flight enters a runway to land another flight is waiting in queue or is lifting off from the other end. The quick procedure was followed by an Air India commander at London’s Heathrow Airport and explained, “Under the plan even as an aircraft is rolling for takeoff, the controller will have given landing clearance to a descending craft. Or, there may be aircraft waiting in sequence to land and the second or third craft would have already received landing clearance.”
The new traffic management system is already operational at Newark’s Liberty International, John F Kennedy airport in New York and Heathrow and this is the first time such a system is used in India. For the time being, the new system will be used only in the day time on the main runway of the city.
Photo Credits: hindustantimes
