The Airports Authority of India is mulling over regulating the air traffic movement by implementing the air traffic flow management system.
In a move to decongest the Mumbai airport, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) is mulling over regulating the air traffic movement (ATM) by implementing the air traffic flow management system (ATFMS). Simply put the ATFMS is designed to meter traffic to taxed capacity resources, in this case the congested metro airports of Mumbai and Delhi.
Emphasising on ATFMS as the need of the hour to regulate the booming air traffic in the country, MG Jhunghare, general manager, aerodrome said, “For the past three years there has been exponential growth in air traffic, especially at the airports in Mumbai and Delhi. The concept has gained ground abroad at airports where the air space is constricted as it results in the regulation of the ATMs in a sequential and efficient manner.”
For understanding, the ATFMS involves two principal processes, one involving the air traffic control for the purposes of tactical safety separations and the other, of the traffic flow management, a process that meters arrival at the capacity constrained airports.
To achieve this, the air traffic control will assign slots to the airlines through separation assurance and would regulate that separation for the prevention of collisions. Speed control for an aircraft would be a vital component and that would be assigned by the ATC.
There are a whole lot of other elements involved in the system that need to be aligned like the air navigation facilities, equipment and services, technical information and real time information or the current information on weather forecasts, congestion delays and the like.
“The process would help us to bring down the holding time for an aircraft to an average of about 10 minutes. It is currently about 20 minutes at the Mumbai airport. But it is to be kept in mind that the traffic handling capacity cannot be the same throughout the year as it is affected by factors such as weather conditions,” said Jhunghare.
“Implementing the ATFMS is under serious consideration by the AAI. But it cannot be implemented just at a single airport and also in isolation at particular airport. For efficient working, it requires coordination between and within the airports. It is a move that would bring down the holding time of the aircraft thus assisting in fuel conservation and also in the efficient ATM,” said S R R Rao, regional executive director, western region, AAI.
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