Radars continue to malfunction at airport

Radars continue to malfunction at airportPublished Date: 5/19/2007 - (NIE)V AyyappanChennai, May 18: The recent ‘organised shutdown’ of radars at the Chennai Airport for maintenance does not seem to have made any difference as they continue to malfunction. Sources said that the approach radars malfunctioned repeatedly forcing the Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) to switch over to manual flight control, causing delay in landings.Every time the radars (primary and secondary radars) malfunctioned, it caused a minimum delay of 15 minutes for each incoming flight.Besides, this also puts stress on the pilots because the flights would either have to be slowed down or flown quite far from the airport for approach to the runway, said an official. This burnt up extra fuel, he added.‘‘Since congestion levels are less here, most aircraft will carry extra fuel for an additional 15 minutes only while flying to Chennai. If the radar condition remains like this, the ATC will have to provide more separation space between the aircraft. This will neccessitate more fuel for the flights coming to Chennai.’’This was what the ATC personnel had been doing yesterday. The radar seemed intermittent at around 1 p.m and then there was no radar at all for about five minutes. This forced the ATC personnel to provide incoming aircraft a separation of 60 miles, something not done when radar was available, sources said.Hence, an incoming flight scheduled for landing at 1.50 pm could land only at 2.10 pm.Meanwhile, pilots and ATC personnel said that it was high time Chennai airport had one more radar as the current radars were failing constantly.‘‘There should be an alternative frequency because Chennai is a possible landing spot for overflying aircraft in case of emergencies. If radars are not proper, such aircraft will not be able to use the airport,’’ said an official.’’ Sources said that if the problem persisted, some of the aircraft would have to be diverted to other airports because they might not be having enough fuel to hover over for a long time before landing.K Ramalingam, Southern Regional Executive Director, AAI, said ‘‘We were having problems with the radar last week. Hence, maintenance was taken up. Malfunctioning is common in electronic machinery.’’An official said that there were plans to install new radars during expansion of the airport.