Cross runway operations on trial

CHENNAI: The cross runway operations on a trial basis were inaugurated at the Chennai airport on Sunday.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) officials said the Chennai Air Traffic Control Tower now handled on an average 329 movements per day, over 800 aircraft transit through Chennai Area Control Centre.

The volume of traffic needed some enhancement of runway capacity as well airspace capacity. This resulted in two new initiatives – cross runway operations and bifurcation of area control centre, said an officer.

At present, the operations were carried out using the main runway for both arrivals and departures, which had reached the maximum handling capacity of 25 movements an hour. Hence, a new procedure had been designed to permit the use of secondary runway for departures and the main runway for both departures and arrivals to enable the airport to handle nearly 32 movements an hour. This would result in a significant 25 per cent increase in traffic handling capacity, the officer said.

Cross runway operations would help in increasing handling capacity of movements per hour and reduce holding time by three to five minutes for departures and arrivals, leading to lesser fuel consumption and aircraft emission. At present, the Area Control Centre in Chennai on an average handled 1,130 flights daily, which is expected to grow further. In order to reduce communication congestion, controller workload and enhancing the operational efficiency and safety, sectorisation had been planned.

Under this, the existing Area Control Centre would be divided laterally into East and West sectors.

Before implementing sectorisation, preliminary safety assessment trials were conducted, which indicated considerable benefits from bifurcation.

http://www.hindu.com/2007/12/18/stories/2007121853930400.htm