Mumbai:
It's as tall as a 30-storey building and is being touted as Mumbai's latest landmark. Already standing tall at nearly 84 metres, the shiny new Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport is the tallest in the country.
This ATC tower offers something that the present one does not - an uninterrupted clear view of the runways and the operational area.
The older 60-metre tower at the airport, plonked near the secondary runway and cargo bay, has been notified as an obstruction, as it blocks the aircraft's flight path forcing carriers like Singapore Airlines and Saudi Airlines to not use the secondary runway.
"Now we will be able to better use the secondary runway. The old ATC tower will be removed and it will increase our efficiencies from the runways, said an Air Traffic Controller.
Once the operations at both the existing and new ATC towers are synchronised, the old structure is expected to be demolished.
Inaugurated by Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh and Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, the new tower is expected to be fully operational by December this year.
Built at the cost of nearly Rs 100 crore, the project missed its earlier deadline of July because of delays in procuring and installing a special kind of glass on the tower.
The airport handles an average of 38 landings and take-offs per hour. With the new tower and other measures, GVK, the company that runs the Mumbai airport, hopes the number will increase to 46.