Planning for a boom

The Airports Authority of India is seeking to modernise traffic services and develop infrastructure at airports.

THE passenger growth in the countrys civil aviation sector, at over 20 per cent, is among the highest in the world. It is slated to cruise far ahead of the passenger growth of countries such as China, France and Australia. By 2020, the number of air passengers in India is estimated to go up to 400 million. International traffic to and from Indian destinations has also increased substantially in the past few years. Indian destinations have become popular for international tourists; the commercial interest is rising, too, owing to the liberal economic policies pursued in the country now.

In order to meet the demands arising from the rapid growth in air traffic in and around the airport, a scientific and rationale gate to gate approach has been considered to ensure safety, regularity and efficiency, through strategic planning and programming of various capacity constraints.

As has been pointed out by Union Minister for Civil Aviation Praful Patel, the number of air travellers is only about 0.8 per cent of the population; by the time even 10 per cent of the population begins to fly, India will need about 5,000 aircraft. This will mean that by 2020, Indian airports will handle about 100 million passengers, including 60 million domestic passengers. Cargo handling will go up to the range of 3.4 million tonnes per annum. The government is planning several improvements in the sector to support and sustain this growth. The airport modernisation plan of the government proposes investments to the tune of $9 billion by 2010.

About two years ago, joint venture companies bagged contracts to modernise and upgrade the Delhi and Mumbai airports. The public private-participation (PPP) route was chosen to develop airport infrastructure in major cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI), the public sector undertaking under the Civil Aviation Ministry, has been entrusted with the task of upgrading and modernising the airports in Kolkata and Chennai at a total cost of nearly Rs.3,800 crore. The plan recently got the approval of the Union Cabinets Committee for Economic Affairs (CCEA).

The AAI is responsible for the development of terminal buildings and airside facilities of non-metro airports. Thirty-five airports have been selected for this and the work is already in progress. Of these, 24 airports are being taken up through PPP for city-side development, including maintenance and operation of the terminal buildings, cargo operations and real estate development. The government aims to transform these airports into world-class facilities through this hybrid mechanism. The initial response from bidders has been promising.

On the high road to development are airports at Amritsar, Udaipur, Tiruchi, Visakhapatnam, Srinagar, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Thiruvananthapuram, Lucknow, Madurai, Mangalore, Aurangabad, Khajuraho, Rajkot, Vadodara, Bhopal, Indore, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Varanasi, Agartala, Dehra Dun, Ranchi and Dimapur. Connectivity to cities such as Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Coimbatore and Jaipur is also being improved. The AAI is responsible for the management of 15 international airports, 79 domestic airports, 24 civil enclaves and eight Customs airports, apart from the joint-venture airports at Delhi and Mumbai.

For a strategic player in global aviation like India, air traffic management (ATM) is a crucial and pressing requirement, which the AAI fulfils responsibly. The AAI is the appropriate authority designated by the Central government for providing air traffic services in the Indian airspace and the oceanic airspace delegated to India by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). ATM means the dynamic, integrated management of air traffic and airspace safely, economically and efficiently through the provision of facilities and seamless services in collaboration with all stakeholders and also by exploiting the airborne capabilities of aircraft in navigating with the required level of accuracy and precision.

The AAI is responsible for the provision and management of air navigation services and implementation of safety programmes in an airspace that measures about 2.8 million square nautical miles (about one million square nautical miles of continental airspace and two million square nautical miles of oceanic airspace) for airspace management and air traffic management for international as well as domestic traffic. In addition to about 1.04 million sq nautical miles of the national airspace, about 1.76 million sq. nautical miles of oceanic airspace over the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea has been delegated to India. (One square mile is 2.56 square kilometre.)

Integrated air traffic management services are provided by the AAI to ensure safe, orderly, efficient and economic operations throughout the Indian Flight Information Regions (FIRs), which extend up to the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea and also up to 4 South Latitude in the Indian Ocean.

The entire airspace is divided into four FIRs Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi. Guwahati is a sub-FIR of Kolkata. Eleven area control centres (ACCs) have been established for the provision of efficient air traffic management functions. These are at Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Mangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati and Varanasi. All the 11 ACCs are equipped with radars, and radar-based enroute services are provided for all flights operating through these centres. The Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata ACCs have multiple sectors, while the other centres operate as single-sector configurations.

The AAI has established 90 international and 110 domestic air traffic service (ATS) routes for smooth flow of traffic. ATS is provided in accordance with ICAO standards and takes care of services such as aerodrome control service, approach control and radar service, area control, flight information service, advisory and aeronautical service and alerting, and search-and-rescue coordination service. In addition, rescue coordination centres are established in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

Communication, navigation and surveillance infrastructure are the three major elements that provide support for efficient air traffic management. The current navigational infrastructure is a combination of different technologies, systems, concepts and services. The infrastructure, which is primarily a ground-based system, supports enroute operations. The aids include 79 Doppler VHF omni range equipment (DVOR) installed all over India, 60 terminal DVIR at airports for arrival and departure, 19 enroute DVOR at as many locations, and 80 distance measuring equipment installed all over India. The AAI has also installed 59 non-directional beacons (NDB), which are being phased out. As many as 43 Instrument Landing Systems are installed at 37 airports.

The countrys two major airports at Mumbai and Delhi are equipped with state-of-the-art modern ATC automation systems consisting of data processing systems, software tools for controlling the decision-making process, safety alerts such as Conflict Detection tool and Minimum Safe Altitude Warning system. Other area control centres are also equipped with limited capabilities. Satellite-based Automatic Detection Surveillance/Controller Pilot Data Link Communications Surveillance and Data Link Communication System is implemented in Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata airports for efficient provision of ATS in the oceanic airspace. In Delhi and Mumbai, high-speed exit and parallel taxiways have been put into operation to reduce runway occupancy time and facilitate multiple runway operations.

In order to improve upon the quality management system, the AAI has taken steps for ISO certification of airports under various standards. The airport in Jaipur has become the first to obtain integrated certification for three standards environmental management system, occupational health, and safety management system.