The Fourth ATS Coordination meeting of Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean Region (BOBASIO/4) Kolkata, India, 22-24 September, 2014. Agenda Item 4: Strategic ATM Plans of Participating States Upper Airspace Harmonisation (UAH) of Kolkata Airspace (Presented by Airports Authority of India) SUMMARY India has reviewed the existing Indian airspace structure and develop a new Airspace Management Strategy to cope with the predicted impressive future growth of air traffic through the state of the art ATM Automation. The paper highlights India s one of the major ANS initiatives in enhancing safety, efficiency and increasing airports & airspace capacity through implementation of new State-of-the-art Automation system,enhanced & Overlapping ATS surveillance/vhf coverage enabling harmonization of upper airspace in Kolkata FIR. The paper calls for the adjacent states in the Region to coordinate with India and take the initiatives for implementing AIDC. Strategic Objectives: A: Safety Enhance global civil aviation safety C: Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development of Air Transport Foster harmonized and economically viable development of international civil aviation that does not unduly harm the environment. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. Unprecedented growth in Air Traffic Asia Pacific region in the last few years and the forecast growth call for enhancement in safety, efficiency and increase of capacity of airspace. 1.2. India has taken many major ANS initiatives in accordance with ICAO Global Plan Initiative and recommendations of a various high level committees to enhance safety, efficiency, increase of airports & airspace capacity through implementation of ATS Automation system, improved ATS surveillance coverage with installation ADS-B ground receivers, Data link Clearance for departure, PBN based RNP10, RNAV 5 city pair ATS routes, RNAV1 SIDs &STARs, establishment of a single continuum of upper airspace for uniform application of rules and procedures and air space safety monitoring activities by BOBASMA in the sub-region of APAC. 1.3. This paper highlights the on-going Upper Airspace Harmonization program in Kolkata FIR. Page 1 of 6
2. DISCUSSION Establishment of a single continuum of upper airspace in kolkatta 2.1 As per the Master plan for restructuring of entire Indian airspace, each FIR will have only one Upper ACC centre with multiple sectors to be operated from four major cities thereby amalgamating 12 ACCs into 4 ACCs initially and subsequently into 2 ACCs. 2.2 Considering the complexity and magnitude of the task, India has decided to proceed in a phased manner and embarked on the project to restructure Chennai FIR in the first phase. Having successfully implemented the establishment of upper Airspace harmonization in Chennai FIR, India has taken up implementation of the upper Airspace harmonization in Kolkata and Delhi FIRs (Fig:1). 2.3 The upper Airspace of Kolkata FIR above FL255 is being restructured as a single continuum of airspace with the introduction of advanced ATS automation system along with integration of 9 Radars & 8 ADS-B stations. The new technique of cross coupling of VHF facilitates creation of multiple sectors to be operated dynamically. ATS Inter Facility Data Communication (AIDC) permits automatic exchange of aeronautical data among ATC units thereby reducing ATS coordination significantly. 2.4 Kolkata airspace is divided into 6 upper area control and one Oceanic control sectors. The airspace has acquired some of the airspace from Delhi and Mumbai FIR with the consideration of providing seamless ATC. There will be 8 lower area control centers containing CTRs and TWRs which will handle traffic from ground level to FL255. 2.5 The Kolkata will also have an efficient VHF network with cross coupling technique to provide VHF coverage throughout the airspace even at lower levels. The Kolkata VHF network is employing IP Radio and IP based VCS system for the first time in the country and will be one of the largest networks using IP based system in the world. 2.6 Benefits of the Upper airspace harmonization include harmonized ATM procedures, Reduction in separation between aircraft resulting in increased airspace capacity utilization and enabling aircraft to get User Preferred Flight Profile, Even Distribution of workload reducing controllers stress and fatigue, effective utilization of Manpower by consolidating and deconsolidating Sectors dynamically depending on Traffic density. Implementation of state-of-the art ATS automation system. 2.7 The advanced automation system has servers in redundant configuration and 3 LANs to make it failsafe.this system is capable of integrating 35 RADARs,32 ADS-B,10 M-LATs. 9 RADARs and 8 ADS-B sensors have been integrated which is giving a coverage well beyond Kolkata FIR with required redundancy. 4D trajectory calculation even beyond Kolkata airspace is a unique feature. The accuracy of trajectory calculation is enhanced by GRIB2 data integration in the system. 2.8 The system boasts of advanced safety net features which detect conflicts and alert the controllers. The safety net consists of Short Term Conflict Alert, Medium Term Conflict Detection, Safe Altitude Warning, Area Proximity warning etc. This will enhance air safety to a great extent. The unique feature of Aircraft Downlink Parameters (DAP) through mode-s will show cockpit parameters to controllers, thereby making them more aware of the aircraft intention. Page 2 of 6
2.9 The Automation System provides for ATS Inter facility Data Communication (AIDC) for automatic coordination with adjacent ATC Centres. Kolkata system has incorporated all the core and optional message sets depicted in Asia Pacific Regional ICD for AIDC version 3. 2.10 Kolkata system is capable of operating 12 Area Control Sectors, 07 Approach Control Sectors simultaneously. This is more than double compared to the present set up.the system is capable of giving advance information on sector capacity overflow. This flexibility is particularly useful for optimum resource utilization. 2.11 Amongst other feature the System is capable of interacting with any external system (like AODB etc,). System can send processed data to any other ATC centers to give them a situational awareness of Kolkata. The use of Electronic Flight Progress Strips would reduce the use of paper strips thus contributing to environment besides saving resources. The Arrival Manager (AMAN) feature will help controllers in decision making and also reduce ground delays. 2.12 The system is served by Data Analysis Tool for statistics generation and error analysis. The system simulator can be used for airspace and procedure planning as well as controllers training. 3. ACTION BY THE MEETING 3.1 The Meeting is invited to. a) Note India s initiatives to establish single continuum of upper airspace enabled through ATS Automation and radar/ads-b/vhf networking in India. b) Impress upon the adjacent states in the Region to Collaborate with India in implementing AIDC. ---------------------------------------- Page 3 of 6
AIRSPACE HARMONIZATION OF CHENNAI, DELHI, KOLKATA AND MUMBAI WITH UPPER SECTORS SHOWN IN THREE LETTER CODE UARD UDP3 UDP1 ULKP UJP DELHI UDP2 UBN UPT UGT UAHC UNN UKW UBS UKE UBW OBC KOLKATA OBC UBE UHS OKC UBL UMM MUMBAI UML CHENNAI OCN OCS UTV FIG: 1 Page 4 of 6
SURVEILLANCE COVERAGE OF KOLKATA UAH (9 RADARS & 8 ADS-B) FIG:2 Page 5 of 6
VHF COVERAGE OF KOLKATA UAH FIG:3 Page 6 of 6