From September 22, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) — which handles the air traffic control (ATC) functions — will launch the integration of upper airspace throughout southern India from the Chennai Air Traffic Control (ATC). Top AAI
sources told this newspaper in New Delhi that this would mean that the Chennai ATC would control traffic movements of aircraft above 20,000 feet throughout southern India which will result in drastic cut in the workload of air traffic controllers and “seamless” air traffic movement. This will also ensure consistent vertical and horizontal separation of aircraft throughout the airspace.
Sources said the other ATC centres at Mangalore, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram would handle the air traffic movement in their respective areas below 20,000 feet. The AAI has also installed new radars at Visakhapat-nam and Bellary and also added another radar at Chennai. Sources said the integration of all the radars is complete and all the data of air traffic movement in the upper airspace will be accessed directly from Chennai with the successful completion of the test-runs.