Lightning hits landing system at city airport

JetKonnect — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:28:36 +0000

Tuesday’s thundershowers accompanied by vicious lightning rendered the all-weather instrument-landing system (ILS) of Mumbai airport useless, the first time this has happened since the deluge of July 26, 2005.As a result 11 flights were diverted while others were delayed by at least 45 minutes.
“As the glide path of the ILS on runway 27 of main runway 09:27 was not working, nine flights were diverted to Ahmedabad airport between 7:45pm and 9pm,” a spokesperson for Mumbai International Airport Limited (Mial) said. (A source, however, said 11 flights were diverted: six Air India, one Kingfisher, one Jet, one GoAir, one SpiceJet, and a chartered flight.)

The ILS helps an aircraft to approach the runway and guides it towards touchdown automatically. Mumbai airport has a CAT-I (category I) ILS, which means it allows an aircraft to take off or land when visibility is down to 800m.

But on Tuesday the incessant lightning interfered with the system and it eventually stopped working. “If the ILS and glide path are unavailable, the pilot is not allowed by air traffic control to approach for landing,” an airport official said.

The lightning was so severe that it affected the lightning arrester barriers in the ILS. The problem was rectified by Wednesday morning by engineers of the Airports Authority of India, which installs and maintains the systems at airports across India.

Even secondary runway 14 of 14:32 could not be used on Tuesday owing to the rains.”Flight delays averaged 45 minutes between 8pm and 1am,” the Mial spokesperson said.

The spokesperson, however, claimed to be unaware about the impact of lightning on thearrester barriers.

In 2005, the system went on the blink when the entire airport was waterlogged for three days, flooding the ILS gear.

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Lightning hits landing system at city airport