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.
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.
Flights are were back to landing and taking off normally at 6:15 pm.
The ATC system crash occurred on a day when the airport's plush new Terminal-3 was made operational with some flights operating out of there.
A software glitch was suspected to be the prime cause for the crash, the sources said, adding that the Autotrac-III system had stopped transmitting inputs to the radar consoles, which show the traffic in the airspace controlled by ATC tower and give vital information like aircraft speed, height and call-signs.
In the past two such instances on January 14 and 26 this year, the ATC had to switch over to the 'manual procedure' to maintain vertical and horizontal separation between aircraft and to enable them to land or take-off.
At that time, the incident had happened during peak hour traffic and the system had taken almost one hour to be rectified, leading to severe congestion over Delhi airspace.
Aviation sources said that systems like Autotrac-II or III were not the only ones maintaining separation between two aircraft.
Most commercial airliners now fly with their own on board traffic collision avoidance systems (TCAS), which provide warnings about presence of another plane in the vicinity, they said, adding that it had been made mandatory to install TCAS on all aircraft operating in India.
(With PTI Inputs)
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.
Flights are were back to landing and taking off normally at 6:15 pm.
The ATC system crash occurred on a day when the airport's plush new Terminal-3 was made operational with some flights operating out of there.
A software glitch was suspected to be the prime cause for the crash, the sources said, adding that the Autotrac-III system had stopped transmitting inputs to the radar consoles, which show the traffic in the airspace controlled by ATC tower and give vital information like aircraft speed, height and call-signs.
In the past two such instances on January 14 and 26 this year, the ATC had to switch over to the 'manual procedure' to maintain vertical and horizontal separation between aircraft and to enable them to land or take-off.
At that time, the incident had happened during peak hour traffic and the system had taken almost one hour to be rectified, leading to severe congestion over Delhi airspace.
Aviation sources said that systems like Autotrac-II or III were not the only ones maintaining separation between two aircraft.
Most commercial airliners now fly with their own on board traffic collision avoidance systems (TCAS), which provide warnings about presence of another plane in the vicinity, they said, adding that it had been made mandatory to install TCAS on all aircraft operating in India.
(With PTI Inputs)
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