Due to pollution and fog, flights are being delayed.
Every year in India, with winter begins a new problem: delays and cancellations of trains and planes due to pollution and fog. Especially in North India, including the national capital Delhi, there is dense fog during the winter season. Because of this, many flights have to be canceled and many are diverted to nearby airports and if the weather improves, they are returned to the correct airport.
The question is what is the solution to deal with this situation? The solution is the instrument landing system. Please let us know how this system can prevent aircraft delay in fog.
disaster at the beginning of winter
The winter season has just started and in Delhi alone, due to poor air quality due to pollution, there is such deep smog that air traffic has come to a standstill. Its worst effect was seen last Monday (November 18, 2024), when 15 flights were diverted from Delhi’s India Gandhi International Airport and more than a hundred suffered delays. This situation arose when the Instrument Landing System (ILS) was installed at the Delhi airport. The reason given for this was that the pilots of many aircraft do not have ILS Category III training. Therefore they cannot land the plane with very poor visibility.
The pilot receives guidance from the ILS
In fact, due to low visibility at the airport, pilots find it very difficult to land planes on the runway and the chances of accident increase during landing. However, today, the most modern aircraft are equipped with such technology, with which the pilot can land the plane even in conditions of low or no visibility. To do this, ILS must be installed on the plane and at the airport.
In ILS, two radio beams are used, which are called the localizer and the glide slope. With its help, the pilot receives vertical and horizontal guidance during landing.
ILS is divided into four categories
ILS are divided into four different categories based on decision height (DH) and runway visual range (RVR). DH is the minimum altitude up to which pilots can rely on the ILS. RVR is the distance up to which pilots can see lights and markings on the runway. If the RVR, i.e. the runway visibility at the decision height, i.e. the height at which the landing is made, is less than a certain standard, then the landing is stopped.
Due to low visibility, pilots find it very difficult to land planes on the runway. Photo: Getty Images
The standards are so set in different categories.
In ILS Category 1, the DH must not be less than 200 feet and the visual range to the runway must also be 550 meters or more. Similarly, in Category 2, the DH standard is 100 feet, that is, DH should not be less than this and RVR should not be less than 300 meters. In Category 3A, the DH is less than 100 feet, but the RVR must be greater than 200 meters. In Category 3B, the DH is more than 50 feet and the RVR is more than 50 meters. In category 3C, the requirement for DH or RVR is eliminated, that is, with the help of the ILS of this category, landing of aircraft can be carried out even with zero visibility.
Zero visibility aircraft landing capability at only a few airports in the world
Only six airports in India have 3BA category ILS facilities. These include airports in Delhi, Lucknow, Jaipur, Amritsar, Bengaluru and Kolkata. At the same time, the ILS category 3C facility, which provides the convenience of zero-visibility landing, is available only at a few airports in the world. These include New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and London’s Heathrow Airport.
The biggest challenge is pilot training.
Despite the convenience of ILS Category 3B, the main reason for stopping aircraft from landing in poor visibility at airports like Delhi and Lucknow is the lack of training and experience among pilots. To land flights in low visibility, any airline must equip its aircraft with Category 3B ILS and train its pilots to operate this technology, so that they can obtain the Category 3B certificate.
The problem is that all pilots deployed on domestic flights do not have category 3B ILS training. Despite the rigor of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC), some national airlines still avoid providing Category 3B training to their pilots. Passengers are the most affected by this, especially during the winter season.
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