Thanks to GAGAN (GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation), pilots of aircraft over Indian skies will not have to fly zig-zag routes as they hop from one guiding ground device to another. Nor would they have to queue up long at, or over, airports. In the bargain, landings on runways would be smoother and better than now. Advantage air travel.

But all that is not yet. The domestic aviation sector has to wait until 2013 to feel the gains from GAGAN, the newly placed satellite-based improvement over GPS. GPS is the popular, almost ubiquitous US positioning system that has helped us to find and go to our destinations. Pilots in air need it the most.

Mr C.R. Sudhir, General Manager (GAGAN) at AAI, Bangalore, said, “A lot of testing has to be done from now on. GAGAN will be operational only by 2013 after it is certified by the DGCA as it is a safety of life application.” Pilots also have to get familiar with the GPS augmentation system.

“There will be many benefits. IATA (International Air Transport Association) has also endorsed the use of S-BAS (satellite-based augmented system) [among its member airlines.] But it is too early to quantify the gains,” he told Business Line . New aircraft come fitted with the wide-area SBAS receivers.

An ISRO official, citing projections made during GAGAN's trials, had earlier said the GPS top-up can save airlines at least one per cent of their fuel bill or around Rs 400 crore a year.

GAGAN is a Rs 770-crore project of the Airports Authority and implemented by the space agency ISRO. Its aim is to modernise the country's air traffic management and smoothen the way aircraft fly along a route, in tune with the ICAO's guidelines.

On May 21, ISRO put in orbit GSat-8, the satellite carrying the first GAGAN transponder. Two more satellites each carrying a GAGAN device are to follow in the next two years.

In general, travel time, fuel and air space management would improve.

A big advantage would be that pilots can ‘fly as the crow does' directly to their destination. Currently, they depend on ground-based navigation devices called VOR, with another set of aids called DME (distance measuring equipment) that are placed every 200 nautical miles. Between Delhi and Bangalore, for instance, there would be half a dozen such navi aids, Mr Sudhir said.

GAGAN will also give noticeably better positions over GPS; it will reduce the error from over 10 metres to 7.6 metres and be especially useful at landings on runways.

Technically users on sea and rail; bus and truck owners, car drivers who have an SBAS receiver can get the new improvements. GAGAN will cover India, Bay of Bengal, South-East Asia, West Asia and up to Africa.

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