New ILS to be commissioned in Kochi airport on Oct 20

Kochi, Oct 16 (UNI) The Airport Authority of India (AAI) has completed the re-installation work of Instrumental Landing System (ILS) at the Kochi International Airport.

AAI officials told reporters today that ILS would be fully operational from October 20 and claimed that the existing ILS was replaced with the modern ILS Category-I.

The AAI, which is responsible for controlling air traffic in airports, had spent about Rs 2.5 crore for the re-installation works.

The airport had witnessed disruption of flights due to poor visibility in the absence of the proper functioning of ILS for the last two days. As many as 19 flights were either diverted to other airports or put on hold at Kochi airport due to fog and poor visibility in the early hours yesterday, they said.

The re-installed ILS Category-I would be put into operation after the approval of the calibration team. The calibration aircraft was expected to conduct the test within a couple of days and it would take only five to six hours for the test.

Proposal for replacement of advanced doppler VOR and distance measuring equipment helping aircraft to save more than ten minutes of flying time was pending before the Director-General of Civil Aviation for approval, the officials said.

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