Politics leads to early opening of ATC tower

The new Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower was officially unveiled on Friday by civil aviation minister Ajit Singh and CM Prithviraj Chavan, but there was politics involved in the much-awaited event.

According to ministry of civil aviation (MoCA) sources, the airport operators (MIAL and AAI) wanted the ATC tower to be inaugurated by December. 

However, sources said that due to political compulsions, the MoCA made the airport operator to inaugurate this in  October. The ministry further wants new T2 terminals, to be opened for public by December.  The sources add that the inauguration of both the projects is being rushed in view of the upcoming general elections and the code-of-conduct being announced preceding it.

As a consequence MIAL and the Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS)  department of AAI, which provides infrastructure and maintenance support for ATC operation started pushing for completion. A senior official from CNS said, “Though we are running short of manpower by 40% all our engineers are working daily from morning to night including holidays. We were given the target of October 18.”

It took 500 employees (peak time) and over 2 million man hours in construction, said the airport sources.

The ATC tower would not become operational immediately.  Once operational, the new as well as the existing ATC towers would simultaneously function for about five-six months to check its efficiency.

Towering numbers
Quantity of concrete used 6,300 cubic metre

Quantity of shuttering used 19,550 square metre

Quantity of structural steel used 26 metric ton

At 83.8 metres, it’s the tallest ATC tower in India built on 2,800 sq metres of land