Lahore airport: Air navigation to be upgraded

Instrument will help aircraft land at the visibility of up to 50 metres.

LAHORE: The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has started upgrading the air navigation infrastructure at Allama Iqbal International Airport. 

Under the new aviation policy 2015, the up-gradation of Instrument landing System (ILS) CAT-IIIB, will help aircraft land at the visibility of up to 50 metres, currently under ILS CAT-II, which is functional since 1999. The runway visual range is 350 meters or more, which causes several delays in flight operations especially during the fog season.

“AIIA would be the second airport in the Asia Pacific region to have this state of the art facility, Delhi’s Indra Gandhi International Airport already is operating with this system”, said Mirza Akhtar, manager AIIAP and team lead of the project while briefing media on Saturday.

“Once installed, the system will help us to streamline the airport operations especially in winters, will help in saving the fuel thus portray a good image in the global aviation industry,” he added.

An ILS is a ground-based instrument approach system that provides precision guidance to an aircraft approaching and landing on a runway, using a combination of radio signals and in many cases, high-intensity lighting arrays to enable safe landing on runway.

The new system is supplemented by advances airfield lighting system and surface movement radar. Combination of these systems will facilitate precision approach and landing guidance to the aircraft in extreme weather conditions.

The cost of CAT-IIIB is $25 million, however, the system was gifted to Pakistan by Qatar.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 23^rd, 2015.

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