Under the UDAN scheme, the Pune based India Meteorology Department’s (IMD) Surface Instrumentation (SI) division has been going to supply instruments to nearly 52 airports across the country. For the development of regional airports, UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) is an initiative of the government. The first flight under the UDAN scheme took off on December 22 between Jalgaon and Mumbai. Recently, the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had approved around 100 new routes which will be covered under the scheme and it to expected to gather pace by February 2018. The Pune’s India Meteorology Department operates 57 aeronautical meteorological stations, and 17 aerodrome meteorological offices in the country.
IMD’s senior officer of the SI division said, “many of these airports would have restricted flying schedules with the standard airport instruments and would require the installation of specific instruments.”
Installation work of UDAN scheme is in progress at Aurangabad and Kolhapur airports in Maharashtra. Two months before with the trail of flights the installations were recently completed at Jalgaon and Shirdi airports. Currently, the India Meteorology department is working on procuring and calibrating airport instruments required for day to day operations. These daily operations include temperature, wind speed, humidity and sunshine recorders. The latest addition to the airport instruments being ingenuously developed by IMD is the transmissometer, Drishti it is said that it improves the runway visibility.
“A total of 26 airports are equipped with Drishti and installation is in progress at 13 others at present. Also, the proposals for installations at seven new airports are in the pipeline, and hopefully we reach the 50 mark by the end of 2018.” said by the official.
The instrument is exclusively supplied for airports located close to hilly areas. The important instruments also supplied to the northern parts of the country, where flight operations are often hit by heavy fogging.
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