The Juhu Air Traffic Control (ATC) will soon get a radar display
system, which will relay flight activities from the Mumbai ATC, when
the construction of the new ATC tower is completed in June. This will
enable the ATC at Juhu to view Mumbai’s flight movements instead of
minute-by-minute coordination for smaller business aircraft that take
off from Juhu.
The smaller airport will be provided with a radar display system, on
which images and flight movements being viewed by the Mumbai ATC will
be directly beamed.
“The two ATCs often cross check with each other about the status and
location of flights being handled by each of them. This is done either
via wireless or a direct hotline, which takes time. This is because
the operator at Mumbai will first try and finish the task at hand, and
then get back to us with the details, and the person operating from
Juhu has to be kept on hold. However, with the new screen, we can
directly see what the Mumbai ATC is viewing and can reduce the
‘talk-time,” a Juhu ATC official explained.
While the Mumbai International Airport Limited handles around 800
international and domestic flights everyday, the smaller Juhu
aerodrome is primarily used for helicopter operations, with around 100
activities everyday.
Moreover, as reported by this newspaper earlier, the permission to
direct all helicopter operations at a height of 500 feet and a radius
of nautical miles were handed over to the Juhu ATC in February.