New Delhi: Flight operations at the IGI
airport were disrupted for around two hours after air
navigation system software crashed at the Air Traffic Control
tower this evening.
The air navigation system, which was being upgraded,
failed bringing flight operations to a halt at around 6 pm,
airport sources said.
The software, installed by a US-based company Raytheon for
automation and surveillance systems of air navigation, failed
while being upgraded and ATC people got in contact with the
company to rectify the fault.
"The radar software in ATC failed due to overloading and some glitch. We have ruled out a virus because the software which is installed by American firm Raytheon is not connected to Internet. A team from Raytheon and our own Data Management System department have reinstalled the software now," a highly placed source told IANS.
The official said before the year 2000, flights were handled without this radar software. "It is called procedural control or in common sense blind controlling where the ATC officer contacts the flight captain and checks altitude, speed and other necessary parameters for landing of the aircraft."
"We used it over two hours when the radars` software crashed around 5.45 p.m. The software was restored around 8 p.m. When we do blind controlling, the availibilty of airspace reduces to one-tenth, which means that instead of 10 aircraft, only one aircraft can operate in sky or ground at one time."
The failure of the system led to manual handling of
flights by the ATC over the Delhi and adjoining air space
including Srinagar, Lahore, Khajuraho and Lucknow.
Under manual handling of flights, the distance between two
aircraft, which is generally 5 to 10 nautical miles while
being handled in automated mode, was increased to 80 nautical
miles. Flight operations then resumed around 7.30 pm.
With heavy air traffic in the evenings at the IGI airport,
several flights had to be diverted while take-off of many
others were delayed.
Raytheon, which has been upgrading Indian air navigation
system, is a major player in designing innovative solutions
for air traffic management.
The company offers a broad range of automation and
surveillance systems in use today in more than 50 countries
around the world.
-PTI
