Crowded skies: Infrastructure under strain

New Delhi/Mumbai:The infrastructure needed to ensure that planes fly safely is under strain; there is overcrowding above metropolitan airports; and there is an acute dearth of air traffic controllers.
And to add to the woes of the traffic controllers, the government is introducing technology to gradually reduce the flying distance between two aircraft from 50 nautical miles to 15 so that more planes can land sooner. Even the height separating two aircraft is being halved from 2,000 ft to 1,000. This means double the number of planes can fly in the same airspace.
This means the work of an air traffic controller will double, unless new officers are recruited soon.
The manpower shortage is alarming. Over 3,000 aircraft criss-cross India’s airspace every day, but the number of traffic controllers is just a fourth of what is required. There are about 1,313 controllers in India; 4,000 are needed to meet the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, according to the ATC Guild, the association of air traffic controllers.
26/09/06 Bipin Chandran & P R Sanjai/Business Standard

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