India’s tallest ATC tower at Mumbai International Airport

The largest Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower in  India was inaugurated outside the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai yesterday.

The structure stands 84 metres high or around the same height as a 30 storey building.

By virtue of its height, the ATC tower would afford all controllers easy and unbroken view of complete operational area of the airport.

It would also help in the optimisation of the separation of the air traffic, while enhancing the traffic handling capacity at the same time.

The ATC tower, which is spread over an area of 2800 square metres, was also comes with state-of-the-art technology such as electronic flight strips that could reduce the workload of controllers and enhance safety and capacity of the airport.

India is the 9th largest aviation market of the world and has seen air traffic increase at the rate of 10 per cent annually.

The tower has been designed by Hong Kong-based architectural firm HOK as also the international engineering designer ARUP.

The shiny new tower, which is Mumbai's latest landmark at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport is the tallest in the country.

According to Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan Maharashtra would have international airports at Nagpur and Pune. While Nagpur would have an airport with two parallel runways, the proposed airport at Chakan near Pune would have a single runway.