The waiting time inside an aircraft before take-off will soon come down thanks to proposed implementation of data link communication for pre-departure clearance of aircraft at the Chennai airport.
Pilots can key in the details directly to the air traffic controller, who will give permission in a similar fashion leading to less radio-telephony congestion and quicker communication. The Chennai ATC has been using the data link communication mode for ships.
“We don’t need to make a call through the very high frequency (VHF) range and then wait for ATC’s departure and route clearance which takes a considerable amount of time. Instead, we can simply send the details pertaining to our flight plan through the data link available on board, which the ATC as well as the ground control en route our flight path can access,” said a senior Air India pilot, who operates on foreign routes.
When a flight takes off at Chennai, it has to contact the city ATC and then while passing over Mumbai, touch base with their ATC and later while flying over Arabian Sea, maintain contact with respective ground control towers using the congested VHF lines.
Now, with the data link mode, pilots need not worry about contacting control towers through VHF. When the pilot logs into the data link, the details will be automatically transmitted from the aircraft to the ground stations.
An ATC official said the data link communication would eventually replace the present system of clearance through voice communication, which congests the VHF lines, forcing pilots to wait at the parking gate with passengers on board.
The new system will also eliminate possibility of human error, as pilots need not read back the entire clearance to confirm receipt of the same from ATC.
The trial operations of data link for pre-departure procedures begun at Mumbai airport on Monday and other airports including Chennai are expected to start trials soon.
Airline operators, however, feel that the equipment is very costly to use for domestic flights. “For long haul flights, the data link would be useful as pilots find it difficult to maintain VHF lines.
But for travel within four hours, there are numerous VHF lines and we don’t need data link mode of communication,” said an airline official.