Kosal Discussion and Development Forum

Nagpur air traffic control (ATC) linked to Jharsuguda airport

July 13, 2012 at 5:46 am sanjibkarmee Leave a comment

Following is a report from TOI:

NAGPUR: The air traffic control (ATC) at Nagpur airport has achieved another milestone by getting interlinked with Jharsuguda ATC. Nagpur ATC is already linked to Bhopal and Hyderabad ATCs, and now it can monitor air traffic over 75% of the country.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, airport manager AK Verma said the interlinking was done by laying an optical fibre cable. “Jharsuguda ATC was commissioned a few days ago. Now, our area extends 960km in the east, 890km in south and 650km in north. Mumbai was linked to Nagpur before the project was launched.”

Airport Authority of India (AAI) had started installation of Indra radars at 38 airports of the country. Nagpur was the first to be commissioned in January 2012. It is also installing automatic dependent surveillance broadcast (ADSB) systems in airports and work in Nagpur is going on at full space. The deadline for this project is December 2013. ADSB will supplement the ATC radars.

“In the present system, ATC transmits electromagnetic waves to the aircraft, which send back its location. When ADSB transponders are installed in aircraft and on ground, the ATC will continuously get signals about their location,” Verma explained.

Office on special duty (OSD) Shafique Shah and ATC in-charge SC Haldar said that work on GPS-aided geo-augmented navigation (Gagan) was also going on at full swing. This technology uses satellites to aid aircraft in navigation. “We will, however, keep the present equipment on standby.” Presently, Gagan is only used in United States, Russia and Europe. China and Japan do not use this technology.

Entry filed under: Infrastructure, Jharsuguda, Jharsuguda Airport, Region watch.