Radar trouble affects operations at Kolkata airport

Flight operations were on Saturday affected at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport here as the Air Traffic Control (ATC) faced problems in the automatic radar system due to failure of BSNL link from a number of destinations.

The Airport Authority of India (AAI) Regional Executive Director S Bhaduri said that the matter was immediately brought to the notice of the BSNL authority which set up an alternative arrangement to control flight operations manually. The BSNL link failures have been reported from Varanasi, Guwahati, Katihar and Kishanganj from where various data inputs are not coming on the screen here, he said.

Besides alternative arrangements by the BSNL, ATC has several emergency back-ups which are also applied, he said. As part of this, Very High Frequency (VHF) radio-range are being used to ascertain the position of the flights, Bhaduri said. The problem has been continuing for nine hours from early this morning but air services have not been disrupted. BSNL workers are at repair to restore the system as quickly as possible, he said.