Rs200-cr sanctioned for upgrade of Kolkata airport's radar system

Kolkata: A grant of Rs200-cr for equipment upgrade will make Kolkata airport the safest in the country. The amount has been sanctioned by the civil aviation ministry, keeping the growing importance of the airport in mind, and also the fact that the Air Traffic Control (ATC) in Kolkata is the busiest in India at night.

The sanction comes after repeated requests by the regional chapter of the Air Traffic Controllers' Guild (India), which had written several times to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) last year, stressing the need for latest surveillance equipment.

The ATC upgrade was originally not a part of the airport's Rs-1542-cr modernisation plan.

Almost 1,000 planes fly over Kolkata daily and the city's ATC controls flight movement in three zones, the east, south and the west. ATC officials have pointed out the fact that there is no back-up for the radar for these zones, as also for the approach radar, which controls the landing and take-off of aircraft. It is expected that decade old equipment would now be replaced with the sanctioned funds.