One of the characteristics of dyslexia is: Problems with direction (up and down) and time (before and after, yesterday and tomorrow). In India, the way airport building projects are being handled smacks of organisational dyslexia, with very little coordination between the authorities concerned.

To meet the large infrastructure needs of the aviation sector, and to satisfy the coalition dharma of maintaining inefficient public sector organisations, Indian aviation has ventured into public-private partnerships in airport building. We announce that India will have “world-class” airports and the best airports in Asia! Full page advertisements are put out in newspapers to project how Indian aviation is safe and shining.

Recently, one such “world-class” airport opened up at Shamshabad, to cater to the growing hi-tech city of Hyderabad. Right from the opening there was the stumbling block of workers belonging to the Airports Authority of India and vested interests making a pitch for the old airport to be functional along with the new one. Similar demands are being made with regard to the other private venture, the Bangalore airport. Despite such hurdles, the Civil Aviation Ministry announces several hundred new airport projects with a caveat that the AAI will be the principle partner.

Is the AAI capable of delivering a world-class airport? With hurdles and interference at all levels, will any worthwhile professional organisation venture into these projects? Let us analyse what has been delivered at the new airport in Hyderabad.

The project area is selected and the plan to build the longest runway in India is made and completed. The runway is built by a private party which also provides the associated equipment for the runway. The AAI takes care of the navigational equipment, which comes under its purview. This is where the fundamentals come into play.

For a jet aircraft to land safely, modern airports have instrument landing systems (ILSs). This enables an aircraft to come in for a safe landing, even in extreme weather conditions. Any new airport it is assumed, will provide CAT II and CAT III facility to land even in zero visibility conditions. If provision for the same is made in the beginning itself, installation of this hi-tech equipment becomes easy.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), vide Annex 14, has mandated that, for operation of jet transport aircraft, the landing runway has to be provided with Approach Light System and PAPI (Precision Approach Path Indicator). The ideal glide path angle is three degrees to the runway surface.

This enables an aircraft to descend at a comfortable rate of around 600 feet per minute. Due to varying wind conditions, this descent rate will differ. The three-degree angle is based on the fact that most aircraft undercarriages are limited to a touchdown at not more than 600 feet per minute.

Any higher angle of the glide path requires a higher rate of descent. And, it restricts the use for autoland facility which is mandatory for CAT II and CAT III ILS approaches. One cannot do an autoland if the glide path angle is greater than 3.25 degrees.

For instance, though the Mumbai runway is 11,000 feet long, effectively there is only 8,800 feet for landing. This is because of the Dharavi Hills, an obstacle on the approach path. The landing threshold has, therefore, been moved inwards and the effective runway for landing reduced.

The obstacle has also resulted in the glide path angle being 3.3 degrees, which prevents CAT II approaches into Mumbai. The shortened length of the runway, which is covered with a heavy coating of rubber, is especially dangerous during the monsoons. The AAI does not carry out maintenance work as per Doc. 9137 issued by the ICAO.

Hyderabad is a new airport. All such issues should have been sorted out right at the design stage. An airport of the future should have all the facilities to enable instrument landings even in very poor visibility conditions. The people who built the airport installed PAPIs and calibrated them to a glide path angle of three degrees, which is the ideal figure recommended by ICAO (Annex 14).

Normally, an aircraft comes in on the ILS approach when the runway is sighted. Thereafter, the pilot has to follow the PAPI until he reaches his flare height for the landing. The AAI installs the ILS, and the angle it has achieved is 3.3 degrees. This has effectively shut out CAT II and CAT III landings in the airfield. They will need to move the glide path equipment inward, thus reducing the effective landing distance of the runway.

Is anyone accountable for such inefficiency? Pilots have been complaining about the discrepancy between the ILS Glideslope and the PAPI angle.

What are the implications of this mismatch in glide angles? Last year, an Iberian Airlines Airbus 340-600 overshot the runway at Quito in Ecuador, while landing in heavy rain. The Quito runway has a glide path angle of 3.3 degrees and the PAPI was at three degrees.

The pilots ducked down to capture the PAPI angle, ignoring the High Sink Rate warning given out by the Ground Proximity warning system. The touchdown was very hard which damaged the undercarriage system, which is required to send the signal for the deployment of spoilers and the thrust reversers. The aircraft has been written off due to the serious damage.

India needs airports with the best of facilities. And they need to be built by experts who know the job. We do not need the baggage of inefficient organisations which cannot deliver world standards. We need to move ‘up’ and not ‘down’. We need to think of ‘after’ and not ‘before’. We need to think of ‘tomorrow’ and not ‘yesterday’.

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