First of its kind, ATC tower installed by AAI at the Vellore airport
Posted on: 12/Dec/2018 10:52:16 AM
Spread over 51.5 acres of land, Vellore airport serves Vellore and Tiruvannamalai districts. In 2018, this Vellore airport was revived under the RCS or Regional Connectivity Scheme of the MoCA is known. The news is AAI or Airport Authority of India has set up a mobile air traffic control or ATC tower at Vellore airport and by this the Vellore airport has become the first of its kind in south India.
It must be noted that the ATC tower is mounted on a trailer-truck and is positioned on a concrete platform in an open space near the airport. There would be controllers and equipment for communication, navigation, surveillance and automated weather observation in the air-conditioned cabin and it could be elevated up to a height of 8 metres. One important piece of information about the cabin is it has got windows with 360 degrees view and is made of blast proof glass. As many as 4 to 5 people could be accommodated inside the cabin.
AAI regional executive director, southern region, Mr. S. Sreekumar, expressed his happiness regarding the tower and said the tower has arrived and has been put in the position. This tower would be made operational and before that it would be tested two to three days. There are as many as eight equipments that were imported by AAI and this mobile tower was one such. This was also confirmed by Mr. Sreekumar. One superb advantage of this tower is in the future flights at Vellore and at other small airports from Chennai could be controlled. For this purpose, a virtual or remote ATC tower would be set up in Chennai. The AAI regional executive director later spoke about how a decision has been taken not to have permanent ATC towers at small airports. He added that till the remote tower for Vellore at Chennai airport is ready the mobile tower would be used to handle flights. He explained how the permanent ATC towers were not feasible for airports that have one or two flights in a day and how the mobile towers could be moved to another nearby airport to guide planes. The good news is AAI is readying the airport as a Chennai-Vellore service as a part of regional connectivity scheme ‘Udan’ and this is expected to begin soon.
The Chennai-Vellore route that was auctioned under the phase-1 of the scheme was bagged by Turbo Aviation and a 20 seater aircraft would be used for the services. By the month of April in 2019, AAI is planning to commission Vellore airport. Just last month, Jharkhand’s Bokaro airport made sensational news when it got the country’s first mobile ATC tower. It is revealed that the towers were imported from MSM Martin Company in Slovakia.
