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In a major embarrassment to authorities, a radar at the newly opened Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) failed for a few minutes, putting many flights at risk.

New Delhi: All radars stopped functioning at Delhi’s international airport, as the systems there crashed at 5:54 pm this evening. Systems were restored but not before Air Traffic Control had to resort to manually guiding aircraft for about twenty minutes.
This led to major disruptions in flight schedules.

New Delhi: In a major embarrassment to authorities, a radar at the newly opened Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) failed for a few minutes, putting many flights at risk.

The radar, the sophisticated air traffic management system which was operationalised in March, got blocked for at least 30 minutes just before 6pm, sending the Air Traffic Control (ATC) in a tizzy.

Incoming and outgoing flights were disrupted between 1750 hours and 1820 hours as the Autotrac-III system crashed, resulting in the air traffic control (ATC) screens going blank, airport sources said.

The ATC said that the situation is under control now.

This is the third time this year that the air traffic management system at the airport has collapsed. The system had crashed twice in January when US company Raytheon’s Autotrac-III system was being tested for installation.

As per sources, only 10-15 flights were hampered and the officials quickly switched over to the earlier system — Autotrac-II — to restore air traffic.

The full-scale commercial operations at the swanky new T3 began today. “We have chosen Wednesday to shift from T2 to T3, because on this day there are least number of flights between 2 pm and 7.30 pm,” Andrew Harrison, Chief Operating Officer, DIAL, said.

DIAL had pushed back the operation date of T3, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 3, by a fortnight to provide more time to all stakeholders to deal with any glitches, including setting up of airline offices, synchronising security procedures, baggage handling and the whole range of airport operations.

Air Traffic Control had reverted to the older Autotrac-II system, which had fortunately not been dismantled. Autotrac is the software they use linked to the ATC radar functions.

Airport authorities told NDTV that during the systems crash there were not too many aircraft in the sky.

VHF audio communications with the aircraft was never lost and the ATC was able to ensure aircraft were vertically separated safely during the crisis.

[Story Source]

This post was submitted by Rishi Kumar Maurya.

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