Airfares and carbon emissions may drastically decrease in the near future as the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and other agencies are working on a cloud-based initiative which will give pilots the real time congestion situation, parking slot and bay availability among other information at the destination airports.
Airfares and carbon emissions may drastically decrease in the near future as the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and other agencies are working on a cloud-based initiative which will give pilots the real time congestion situation, parking slot and bay availability among other information at the destination airports.
Based on the information assessed, the pilots can delay their departures to save on time and fuel. At present, specially during peak hours, planes are forced to hover around in the airspace for 20 minutes on an average before getting clearance for landing.
"As nearly 40% of an airline's operational cost involves fuel, which translates into higher airfares, consumption of less fuel might reflect in the airfares, which may come down," said a senior ATC official. A high-level meeting was held in the Mumbai Air Traffic Control (ATC) complex in this regard on Thursday.
According to AAI insiders, the initiative called Collaborative Air Traffic Flow Management (CATFM) is expected to be rolled out for pilot test in the next few months. The system will be introduced first in the high traffic movement airports of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai to be followed later in Bangalore, Hyderabad and others.
According to the data available with the Mumbai airport operator, during 2013-14, the CSIA saw 2,73,540 take-offs and landings, including passenger, cargo, general aviation and defence, which comes to 750 on an average daily. Correspondingly, 3,22,21,395 passengers were ferried in these flights.
The development comes in view of an estimate prepared by the ministry of civil aviation, which expects the nation's airports to be handling 336 million domestic and 85 million international passengers with projected investment to the tune of $120 billion by 2020, turning India into the third largest aviation market in the world.
Insiders revealed that the initiative will help in curbing carbon emission, which is increasingly becoming a cause for concern. The civil aviation ministry, in March, had informed Parliament about increase in India's total carbon emission from aviation sector rising to 15.63 million tonnes in 2013 from 15.39 million tonnes in 2012, an increase of 1.57%. The ministry attributed the rise to introduction of new routes for airlines and overall increase in aircraft movement.
According to experts, the implementation of the project will help in bringing more efficiency in aircraft movement operations, reducing stress on staff-crunched air traffic controllers.
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