Minor fire at Chennai airport

Inside the Chennai airport. There were reports of a minor fire in the Air Traffic Control room on March 12, 2013.

A fire broke out in the Air Traffic Control room at Chennai airport on Tuesday affecting operations for a few hours but no casualties were reported.

The fire was caused due to malfunctioning of batteries, a probe has been ordered into the incident.

A total of 12 incoming and outgoing flights were affected even as flights arriving in the city were diverted to other locations including Bangalore. However, the flight services from Chennai resumed around 6 a.m.

The overall operations had become normal around 8 a.m. though some flights were delayed due to the mishap which occurred around 2.40 a.m.

Five five tenders were engaged and the blaze doused within 20 minutes.

No casualty was reported but computers and the ceiling in the ATC hall was damaged in the fire.

Meanwhile a car went up in flames in the airport premises after the driver lost control of the vehicle and dashed it against the wall, airport sources said.

The driver fled from the spot.

Instrument Landing System fails at Chennai airport

The Instrument Landing System (ILS) fixed on two runways at the Chennai airport has not been functioning since 25th Feb 2013 night, and it may take three months to rectify the problem, airport sources said.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has issued a ‘Notice To Airmen’ in this regard. This would mean that pilots would have to follow a ‘non-precision’ approach while landing.

A senior pilot said if visibility levels were normal, landing would not be a problem. However, if conditions were poor, arrivals of aircraft would be delayed. Flights could also be diverted to nearby airports in some cases. As far as Chennai was concerned, the problem would only be a delay in the arrival of aircraft as landings would have to be sequenced, he said.

Available records showed the ILS is a ground-based instrument approach system, which provides precision guidance to an aircraft approaching and landing on a runway.

It consists of two independent sub-systems — one providing lateral guidance to an aircraft approaching a runway and other provided by the ILS receivers in the aircraft.

Airport sources said the AAI had issued NOTAM for a period of three months as there seems to be a major fault in both the ILS systems on the runways.

When contacted, D. Devaraj, regional executive director, AAI, southern region, said there were some problems created in the system when whitewashing work was taken up at the Air Traffic Control tower building. “The ILS facility is available, only some small fine-tuning is required,” he said.

Another senior AAI officer said, there was some technical problem, following which the AAI had informed the pilots that the height from which they have to sight the runway before landing had been increased from the existing level. Because of the change in the height restrictions, the movement of flights would not be delayed, he said.