The second runway – Runway 10/28 – at Delhi Airport has been geared up with CAT III expertise on Saturday, used in periods of low visibility for flight operations. Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) declared the profitable conclusion of the re-carpeting and refurbishment work on this runway on the Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia shared on X (previously Twitter) that CAT III has been activated on the runway. He wrote, “The CAT III enabled Runway 10/28 at the Delhi Airport has been operationalised today. This would ensure further mitigation of weather-related congestion issues.”
According to airport sources cited by information company ANI, the runway has been handed over to Air Traffic Control (ATC) for business operations since Saturday. Now, Delhi Airport has 4 operational runways, the sources stated.
Following the completion of rehabilitation work, Delhi Airport is poised for future operations at its full capability. This improvement is predicted to extend the passenger dealing with capability of its three terminals to 100 million passengers each year (MPPA), whereas the airside capability will probably be elevated to deal with 140 MPPA, ANI report additional stated.
Re-carpeting work at second runway
DIAL initiated a re-carpeting mission for the three,813 meters and 45-meter-wide second runway in mid-September 2023, accomplished in December 2023, and subsequent efforts centered on operationalising the Airfield Ground Lighting (AGL).
The rehabilitation mission for Runway 10/28, undertaken by DIAL, aimed to boost the general passenger expertise by introducing a number of further taxiways.
DIAL executed re-carpeting procedures, encompassing the milling of the complete runway size and overlaying it with Polymer Modified Bitumen (PMB).
Polymer-modified bitumen (PMB) combines bitumen with a number of polymer supplies, elevating the mechanical properties of the bitumen. This enhancement permits PMB to endure heavy-duty visitors and face up to excessive climate situations.
What is CAT III?
CAT III (Category III) expertise represents a sophisticated suite of instrument touchdown system (ILS) capabilities designed to facilitate plane landings in extraordinarily low visibility situations, similar to dense fog, heavy rain, or snow.
ILS CAT III furnishes pilots with exact and dependable steerage, providing detailed lateral and vertical path, method trajectory, and landing zone data. This allows pilots to execute exact landings even with out visible references, considerably decreasing the chance of accidents brought on by elements like human error, spatial confusion, or miscalculations of touchdown distances.
The main goal of CAT III is to boost security throughout landings when visibility is severely restricted. CAT III contains totally different ranges – CAT IIIA, CAT IIIB, and CAT IIIC – every specifying specific necessities and capabilities.
Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport has adopted CAT IIIB ILS, a sophisticated anti-fog touchdown system. This expertise can also be in use at airports in Amritsar, Jaipur, and Lucknow, with the latest addition being the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata, geared up with CAT IIIB expertise.
