Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

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vsunder
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by vsunder »

Runway concreting work started for Hollongi airport at Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh. Foundation stone was laid by Shivraj Patil in 2007 and then nothing happened. I suppose runway can be used for military operations if need be, There are airports/airstrips at Tezu and Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh. As I just said in the roads thread, the window of opportunity for misadventure in Tawang is shrinking and fast.


https://twitter.com/Sahilinfra2/status/ ... 8075066370
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by vsunder »

Kusinagar airport where Buddha attained Nirvana is opened. It will cater to Buddhist international traffic. It's in a remote part of UP difficult to get to and takes a very long time by road. Possibly one can fly to Gorakhpur and then by road to Kusinagar in the past. YA had pushed hard for completion.

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/ina ... 49508.html

Places like Azamgarh a very backward part of Purvanchal in UP and Darbhanga (really Dwar Bangla or gateway to Bengal and a former princely state) in remote North Bihar just got operational airports too.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by arvin »

Sheer negligence to have left out places like Buddha's resting place out of tourist circuit for so long. Kudos to Yogi and Modi for this.

From the above link
The inauguration of the Kushinagar International Airport will be marked by the landing of the inaugural flight at the airport from Colombo, Sri Lanka, carrying a Sri Lankan delegation of over 100 Buddhist monks and dignitaries including the 12-member holy relic entourage bringing the holy Buddha relics for exposition.
Direct tourist traffic from Japan would be a real revenue earner.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by vsunder »

^^^^ Not yet. They need 35 acres of land to install ILS facilities for truly international level flights. Also airport runway is 3.2 km enough length for a 777 to land at 2700m but margin of error is a bit small. So I do not see wide body heavies landing here but narrow body Airbus types like 320. So no Japani yet from Japan directly, except my jootha.

Gaya also has an airport with a 2.6 km runway small for everything. It receives international flights only from Yangon currently. 100 acres of govt land is encroached which the AAI wants the state govt to help in handing over to begin extending the runway. But so far the Biharis have been blissfully doing nothing.

There is a third airport at Shravasti where Buddha spent many chaturmas. Recently opened. Its near Gorakhpur. It has an even smaller runway at 1.3 km, possibly for ATR-72 type. All the runways, Azamgarh, Gaya, Kushinagar, Shravasti and Darbhanga in Bihar, new ones are asphalt. Gaya is old opened as an airstrip in 1936. AAI wishes to develop it as an alternative to NSC Bose international in Kolkata as there is no airfield between Varanasi and Kolkata for emergency landing of a heavy say.

Kushinagar is the third international airport in UP after Chaudhury Charan Singh International airport at Amausi/Lucknow on the Lucknow to Kanpur road, Babatpur/Varanasi airport, Kushinagar the new one. International airports coming up in UP are Maryada Shri Ram international at Ayodhya, Jewar airport in NOIDA/NCR. In addition civilian enclaves have been operationalized at IAF Bareilly under project Udan and existing civilian enclaves refurbished from crappy hole in the wall operations to a better measure of comfort at HAL Chakeri, Kanpur, IAF Bamrauli Central Command HQ at Prayagraj. Airports coming up are at Chitrakoot, Mathura, Moradabad and possibly making a civilian enclave at IAF station Agra.

I have flown through most of these airports, Lucknow, Kanpur, Prayagraj(always a thrill to see the Mirages lined up) Varanasi etc etc since 1964 and through all of them as recently as 2016. The most changes are at Varanasi and Lucknow. Varanasi had a lot of construction going on. Approach highways, flyovers etc in 2016.

Another airport that was in UP but now in Uttarakhand is Jolly Grant airport in Dehradun. It has seen massive refurbishing and looks nice but unfortunately could not enjoy it. Was last through here in 2017 when the airport was a mess with scaffolding and construction. I was on my way for a hiking and climbing expedition in the Valley of Flowers, Pindari glacier and Tungnath and the remote Mana pass.
Last edited by vsunder on 09 Nov 2021 21:11, edited 1 time in total.
arvin
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by arvin »

Thanks for the updates vsunder ji
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by chetak »

@Airbus · 6 Dec
There's a new kid in town! The first #A321XLR flight test aircraft - MSN11000 - has now completed structural final assembly in Hamburg.

This aircraft will be joined by two others to complete flight testing and Type Certification programme. https://fly.airbus.com/31ARAc6

Image
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by arvin »

Could be due to incorrect weight distribution, but posting it since its Max 8.

https://liveandletsfly.com/737-max-rotates/
In an incident that may have been caused by improper weight and balance onboard, an Air Canada 737 MAX 8 rotated on its own, forcing pilots to hold the nose down until the aircraft obtained sufficient takeoff speed.
When the nose rose expectedly, pilots were able to push it down and keep it down until the aircraft gained enough speed for takeoff. The incident is likely attributed to a weight imbalance in the cargo hold, though that is not clear.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by SriKumar »

^^^ Sounds like a problem. Hats off to the pilots for avoiding a very serious situation through quick action. It rotated before acheiveing take-off velocity, potentially leading to a situation where it would have dropped down and hit the runway due to insufficient lift.

The link posits weight distribution as a possible cause. As i understand it, un-even distribution of weight should not cause rotation during takeoff (unless the amount on uneven-ness is very, very severe, and this would have shown up ). During takeoff, the a/c is still supported by the ground and supported at 3 points on the landing gear. I doubt that the (partial) lift generated by the wings prior to reaching takeoff velocity was sufficient to rotate the plane. In any case, if it was un-eveven distribution of cargo, the pilots would have to account for it during the rest of the flight as well (which was not indicated). If it is the control logic, they better get it sorted out pronto. I am assuming there was a siginificant re-write of code and logic after the grounding of the 878-Max. New code can have new bugs. Not sure what happened, as always there are perhaps multiple contributing factors to this.

Added later: Some of the above speculation involves specifics of the dimension/configuration of the 787-max (e.g. location of its landing gear, c.g. and and center of lift), which I do not know.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by arvin »

Yes, It does looks like an issue. Since the plane was still supported by ground, imbalance in weight should not have come into play.
In earlier 2 crashes, the MCAS pitched the nose down. Now it seems to be doing the opposite, pitching it up.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by neerajb »

Could be weight and balance issue or related. Elevator trim at takeoff is based on CG calculations. If the calculation is off or trim is set incorrectly, it can cause early rotation or difficult rotation (if set too nose heavy). A Northwest A320 faced similar issue of early rotation due to incorrect trim setting.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by arvin »

But still shouldnt the rotation be under the control of pilot. Shoudnt it happen only when HE pulls the stick back.
An incorrect trim will result in either short or long rolling distance and of course that depends on the weight and loading conditions.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by neerajb »

Usually the main landing gear is located at the CG of commercial aircrafts and it is done for easy handling during take off. When loaded, the CG moves around this point but within a limit. To cater to this, pitch trim is used so that the aircraft handles the same way. When the trim is changed, it moves the leading/bigger part of the horizontal tail. The yoke moves the trailing part/elevator of the tail and has relatively lesser leverage. One can crash a plane with incorrect trim. Northwest A320 is one such similar example where aircraft loading caused the CG to move aft and the pilots incorrectly setup the trim the opposite way i.e. instead of nose down, they set it to nose up. Both combined caused early rotation. In that case, pilot touched down after getting airborne, overran the runway but all survived. In this case, the crew used the elevator to keep it down until rotation (and must be pressing the trim down button on the yoke, standard SOP after the Ethiopian crash though max has been fixed but still).

Cheers....
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by arvin »

Thanks neerajb for the explanation.
The shortcuts that Boeing pursued for Max, every move of it will be watched closely.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by srin »

WTF ? (The topic is pertinent to multiple threads, but putting it here for now)

Partial relief for Air India in Devas award
In partial relief for India, a court in Canada has said that investors of Devas Multimedia can seize only 50% of Air India’s (AI) assets held by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). It has also quashed the order permitting seizure of funds belonging to the Airports Authority of India (AAI).
Earlier, in two separate orders on November 24 and December 21, Devas shareholders had received permission from the Quebec Superior Court to seize assets of AAI and AI held by IATA in connection with the two arbitration awards it won for wrongful cancellation of its deal with ISRO’s arm, Antrix, in 2011. Subsequently, Devas shareholders moved to freeze $30 million belonging to the two entities, including $17.3 million of ticketing fees collected on behalf of AI.
...
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by jaysimha »

CSIR NAL Creating Indian Civil Aviation Jul 9, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kFm8VfvlA&t=22s
[youtube]M8kFm8VfvlA&t=22[/youtube]
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by sumsumne »

Ilker Ayci declines Tata Group's offer to be CEO & MD of Air India


https://www.rediff.com/business/report/ ... 220301.htm

Nicer way of saying GOI did not clear the appointment?
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by arvin »

Good he 'declined' by himself.
Funny his nationality didnt raise eyebrows and he reached this stage.
Nobody gave a thought to geo politics considering the Airline.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by Vips »

India's first indigenous flying trainer HANSA-NG completes sea-level trials.

India's first indigenous flying trainer 'HANSA-NG' designed and developed by CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories, has successfully completed the sea-level trials at Puducherry from February 19 to March 5.

The aircraft was flown to Puducherry covering a distance of 140 nautical miles in 1.5 hours at a cruising speed of 155 km/hr on February 19, NAL said in a release on Saturday.

The objective of these trials were to evaluate handling qualities, climb/cruise performance, balked landing, structural performance including positive and negative G, power plant and other systems performance at sea level, it said.

All the objectives of the sea-level trials were met and the aircraft was ferried back to Bengaluru on March 5, after completing 18 hours flying in Puducherry, it said.

The aircraft was piloted by Wing Commander K V Prakash and Wing Commander Dilip Reddy of Aircraft & Systems Testing Establishment (ASTE), and the flight was monitored by NAL designers and Wg. Cdr. Reeju Chakraborty as Flight Test Director from telemetry.

According to NAL, HANSA-NG is one of the most advanced flying trainers powered by Rotax Digital Control Engine with unique features like Just-In-Time Prepreg (JIPREG) Composite Lightweight Airframe, glass cockpit, bubble canopy with wide panoramic view, electrically operated flaps, etc.

It is designed to meet the Indian flying club needs and it is an ideal aircraft for Commercial Pilot Licensing (CPL) due to its low cost and low fuel consumption, it said, adding that NAL has already received more than 80 LoIs (Letter of Intents) from various flying clubs.

NAL Director Jitendra J Jadhav said a total of 37 flights and 50 hours of flying have been completed and few more flights will be conducted before getting Type Certification by DGCA.

Type Certification is likely to be completed by April and thereafter the manufacturing will enhance the aerospace ecosystem under 'Atmanirbhar Bharat', he said.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by chetak »

https://indianexpress.com/article/busin ... g-7869860/

SpiceJet decided to continue training its pilots at a Boeing 737 MAX simulator facility near Delhi despite knowing that equipment at the said training centre was faulty, official sources told The Indian Express.

Aviation safety regulator DGCA, which barred 90 pilots of the airline from flying the 737 MAX model till they undergo retraining on a compliant simulator, has served a show-cause notice to SpiceJet and Canadian flight training service provider CAE, which manages the simulator facility.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by arvin »

I wonder how Akasa Air promoted by Rakesh Jhunjunwala is training its pilots.
They have also ordered 737 MAX.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by chetak »

arvin wrote:I wonder how Akasa Air promoted by Rakesh Jhunjunwala is training its pilots.
They have also ordered 737 MAX.
They will train normally and as usual

$pice was training their pilots on a faulty sim without caring for the instructions of the authorities and that is why so many of their pilots were barred from flying the MAX because their training was invalid.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by arvin »

From these 2 customers Spicejet and Akasa, Boeing has a healthy order book of 214 (264 with options) Max 8 from India.
Not bad if compared to Airbus order book of 650.
Boeing must have offered good competitive pricing to regain the market share.

https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-max-orders-india/
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by manish »

arvin wrote:From these 2 customers Spicejet and Akasa, Boeing has a healthy order book of 214 (264 with options) Max 8 from India.
Not bad if compared to Airbus order book of 650.
Boeing must have offered good competitive pricing to regain the market share.

https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-max-orders-india/
Saar, those 155 SpiceJet 737MAX on order are anything but firm if you ask me.

In the recent past, quite a lot of them newly built and idling at Boeing Field went to others including Southwest after being repainted. I suspect SpiceJet has no $$ to pay up payments due to take delivery of these frames.

SpiceJet, with its weak finances and especially with its cash cow cargo business having been hived off into an independent entity, may find it tough to survive once the fare caps introduced post-COVID by MoCA are withdrawn and IndiGo moves in for the kill from top and bottom along with a host of new competitors looking to carve out some space in the market for themselves.

Lest we forget, a mere 2-3 months before going belly up, the erstwhile Jet Airways had ordered an eye watering 205 737 MAX (coincidence??!!)
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by Vips »

Retraining Spicejet pilots to fly Boeing 737 MAX.

It takes only two hours — roughly the time it takes for a plane to fly from Delhi to Mumbai — for a pair of pilots to complete their training on the 737 MAX simulator at Boeing’s centre in Noida, the only one of its kind in India.

Going by this estimate, all the 90 Spicejet pilots who the civil aviation regulator barred from flying the 737 MAX can be retrained in 90 hours.

“Retraining a couple of pilots will take two hours,” a Spicejet spokesperson told Business Standard. The budget carrier is the biggest customer in India for Boeing 737 MAX planes. It has 11 of these planes in its fleet and 144 pilots to fly them.

Recently, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) asked 90 of those pilots not to fly the planes until they had been retrained.

An airline official said the DGCA’s decision arose from issues of “return to service” requirements for the 737 MAX. India, along with a host of other nations, had grounded these planes in 2019 after the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX on March 10 near Addis Ababa.

India lifted the ban in August 2021 after Boeing changed the aircraft’s software and other systems to enhance safety. This “return to service” required pilots to be re-trained at Boeing’s Noida facility, which Canada-based CAE Inc operates.

The DGCA found deficiencies in the systems that kick in when the aircraft faces aerodynamic stalling while mid-air. It reportedly found a dysfunctional “stick shaker” that violently vibrates the control wheel of the plane in the event of a stall. This hampered the pilots’ ability to gauge the plane’s pitch when the last-resort emergency warning in the cockpit came on.

The vibration of the stick-shaker is the final indicator of a plane’s ability to stay aloft when all other audio emergency warning systems have either been activated or failed.

CAE Inc had not responded to Business Standard’s queries till the time of publishing this story.

An airline official said that though there were problems with the stick-shaker in the simulator, “no changes would be required to be made in the simulator software and only the unserviceable parts needed to be replaced” before the 90 banned pilots could be re-trained.

The DGCA’s decision to make retraining of 737 MAX pilots as a condition for return to service is in sync with the US Federal Aviation Admin­istration (FAA), which, too, had asked pilots to be re-trained on 737 MAX simulators while clearing the plane’s return to service.

One of the things pilots were to be trained in was the change in the movement of the plane on autopilot after the activation of the stick-shaker.
Both flight commanders as well as captains had to undergo the training.

The 737 MAX pilots have had to undergo several other training requirements, such as in how to control the aircraft going nose up on autopilot, dealing with automatic deactivation of the autopilot system, and in situations when the flight director might not work.

The flight director system enables an aircraft to follow its trajectory at a certain altitude.

Boeing made significant changes in the 737 MAX’s Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). According to Boeing, the MCAS is activated only when the plane is being flown manually and ‘unusual conditions’ occur at the same time and not in normal flying circumstances.

In addition to being well-versed with the new MCAS functions and operations, pilots need to undergo training on how to deal with wrong flight control computer commands that change the aircraft’s speed on erroneous readings of the airflow.

In case the 737 MAX computers fail to gauge the airflow correctly, the pilots are trained to adjust the speed of the plane manually.

In addition to demonstrating their skills after training on a simulator, pilots also have to go through a trial on a real plane.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by chetak »

Russia to replace GPS with Russian space-based satellite navigation system GLONASS.

Russian air transport agency is asking airlines to prepare for stoppage of GPS and to equip themselves with GLONASS system to mitigate risk of suspension of services over Russian territory.

and BTW, don't mess with the GLONASS system satellites

On November 15, 2021 Russia conducted anti-satellite test, when a missile was launched into space from Russia, destroying a retired Russian satellite.

This test was meant as a message to the United States that Russia can destroy American satellites including 32 GPS satellites.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by Vips »

IndiGo becomes first airline to land aircraft using indigenous navigation system GAGAN.

Indigo became the first airline in the country to land aircraft using the indigenous navigation system GAGAN, according to a statement issued on
Thursday. The flight was conducted using an ATR-72 aircraft and landed at the Kishangarh airport in Rajasthan on Wednesday morning, using GPS-aided geoaugmented navigation (GAGAN), which has been jointly developed by the Centrerun Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the statement issued by IndiGo said.

GAGAN is used to provide lateral and vertical guidance when an aircraft is approaching a runway for landing. Its precision is especially useful at small airports where the instrument landing system (ILS) has not been installed.

"In India's civil aviation sector, GAGAN will modernise the airspace, reduce flight delays, save fuel and improve flight safety," the statement said.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued a mandate for all aircraft registered in India after July 1, 2021 to be fitted with GAGAN equipment, it added.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued a mandate for all aircraft registered in India after July 1, 2021 to be fitted with GAGAN equipment, it added.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by arvin »

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india ... 21731.html
Aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has deregistered Air India’s four Boeing 747 jumbo jets that were not in operation since February 2020, sources said on Wednesday.
It is not clear what will be done with these four planes now, they added.
They were last used for Covid evacuations. Air frames still have life in them. Could still be used for research purposes.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by hgupta »

arvin wrote:https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india ... 21731.html
Aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has deregistered Air India’s four Boeing 747 jumbo jets that were not in operation since February 2020, sources said on Wednesday.
It is not clear what will be done with these four planes now, they added.
They were last used for Covid evacuations. Air frames still have life in them. Could still be used for research purposes.
Let's convert one of them to a flying testbed and use it to support the Kaveri program.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by chetak »

In a first, IndiGo uses Indian navigation system to land aircraft
April 29, 2022

The test flight that landed at Kishangarh is a part of the approval process with aviation safety regulator DGCA, which includes training of pilots, validation of approach and simulator sessions.

An IndiGo-operated ATR 72-600 aircraft landed at Kishangarh airport Thursday, using an approach process guided by India’s own satellite-based augmentation system named GAGAN, or GPS-aided GEO Augmented Navigation. With this trial landing at the small airport near Ajmer in Rajasthan, India joined a small group comprising the US, Japan and Europe with its own satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS).

https://indianexpress.com/article/busin ... t-7892360/
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by rsingh »

GPS aided ? WTF . So if GPS signals are denied we are kaput. Russia and China also do have their own systems.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by Dilbu »

It should gradually move on to IRNSS after establishing the stability using GPS.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by JTull »

Some details about GAGAN tech here.

https://gagan.aai.aero/gagan/

https://gagan.aai.aero/gagan/content/gagan-working

https://gagan.aai.aero/gagan/content/faq-0

Btw, GAGAN signals are not encrypted. I wonder if it can be used by adversaries for missile guidance?
Inclusion of additional GNSS constellations :There are also options being considered regarding inclusion of additional GNSS constellations in SBAS such as GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou (COMPASS) in addition to GPS..Multi-constellation service expands the DF SBAS to include differential corrections for additional GNSS constellations. This adds no new capability, but enables the use of more ranging sources which should improve availability and continuity and provide more margin in scintillation and interference environments
Last edited by JTull on 29 Apr 2022 14:38, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by JTull »

Some more details of the flight here.

India 1st in Asia-Pacific to use satnav to land aircraft
MUMBAI: Satellites have been helping motorists navigate their way to destinations for decades now, but on Thursday, for the first time in Asia-Pacific region, the very same constellation of satellites that offers GPS teamed up with three ISRO satellites to provide three-dimensional navigation guidance to pilots who landed their aircraft safely on to the Ajmer airport runway in a successful trial flight.

“India is the first country in Asia-Pacific Region to achieve such a landmark...have a satellite-based landing procedure,” said government-owned Airports Authority of India (AAI), adding the successful trial was a major “air navigation services” milestone in India’s civil aviation history. Currently, air navigation services are provided by ground-based systems.

IndiGo airline carried out the test flight with its ATR aircraft that departed from Delhi for Ajmer’s Kishangarh airport, piloted by Captain Sandip Sud and Capt Satish Veera, while Capt Shweta Singh, deputy chief flight operations inspector, and other Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials were on board.

The satellite-based navigation system, evocatively called GAGAN (GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation) offers almost the same accuracy as a ground-based landing system comprising antennae and beacons that transmit signals to aircraft to help pilots land in runway visibility up to 550 metres or more. The one difference though was that the said ground-based system called CAT-I ILS has a “decision height” of 200 feet. It’s the height at which pilots should discontinue the descend to land if they have not yet spotted the runway. But the decision height for the trial flight was set higher, at 250 feet. The Indigo pilots used ‘Localiser Performance with Vertical Guidance (LPV)’ approach—essentially carrying out a descent and landing with vertical and lateral navigational guidance from GAGAN satellites, that is.

IndiGo in a statement said: “The tests at Kishangarh Airport were performed as part of initial GAGAN LPV flight trials. After the final approval by DGCA, the procedure will be available for usage of commercial flights.”

AAI said LPV approaches will make it possible to land at airports not equipped with expensive ground-based landing systems, which includes many small regional airports. The DGCA has issued a mandate stating all aircraft registered in India after 1 July 2021 be fitted with GAGAN equipment. Currently, 76 aircraft in India with airlines such as Indigo, SpiceJet, Air India, Go First and Air Asia are fitted with GAGAN equipment and are capable of using these LPV procedures, said AAI.

Other than GAGAN, there are only three space-based augmentation systems in the world—US (WAAS) Europe (EGNOS) and Japan (MSAS). “For the aviation sector, GAGAN can bring benefits in terms of fuel saving, saving in equipment cost (ground based navigation system not needed), flight safety, especially in adverse weather conditions, increased air space capacity etc,” said ISRO, which had launched the three GAGAN satellites into orbit over the past decade.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by saip »

India's SpiceJet under investigation after severe turbulence injures passengers

CNN
DGCA seems to have acted swiftly and appropriately. Any further details?
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by srin »

^^^ Shouldn't this be investigated by the AAIB and not DGCA ? There have been historical cases where the regulators have been culprits, so fact-finding is better handled by an independent agency.
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by chetak »

saip wrote:India's SpiceJet under investigation after severe turbulence injures passengers

CNN
DGCA seems to have acted swiftly and appropriately. Any further details?

The turbulence is a random phenomenon and the air crew, in this this case, cannot really be faulted for their handling of the emergency.

You will never catch an experienced traveller with his/her seat belt unbuckled unless she/he needs to go to the toilet or something.

those passengers who were bounced about during the heavy turbulence, basically were not wearing seat belts tightened in the regulation style.

anyway, after the incident, the same aircraft was cleared for a ferry flight to kolkata (without passengers or cabin crew) for a detailed technical check. This would be over and above the specified checks done and signed off in the log book by the AME after the aircraft landed.

this ferry was to probably avail of better technical facilities at kolkata, more trained staff and basically do a better and a thorough job before releasing the aircraft back into regular revenue service.

The DGCA has since de-rostered the two pilots, the maintenance in charge of spice jet, as well as, the AME at durgapur who cleared the aircraft for the ferry have been grounded pending investigation.

jiski lathi, bains, etc, etc.

if you ask 10 different dgca clowns and you will get 10 different answers.


This is also why diwali gifts from airlines tend to be very very substantial, apart from uncounted numbers of free tickets.
Prasad
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by Prasad »

People routinely unbuckle immediately after the seat belt sign goes off after takeoff and again the second the landing gear touches the tarmac. Getting bounced during sudden turbulence is hardly surprising.
sohamn
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by sohamn »

chetak wrote:
saip wrote:India's SpiceJet under investigation after severe turbulence injures passengers

CNN
DGCA seems to have acted swiftly and appropriately. Any further details?

The turbulence is a random phenomenon and the air crew, in this this case, cannot really be faulted for their handling of the emergency.

You will never catch an experienced traveller with his/her seat belt unbuckled unless she/he needs to go to the toilet or something.

those passengers who were bounced about during the heavy turbulence, basically were not wearing seat belts tightened in the regulation style.

anyway, after the incident, the same aircraft was cleared for a ferry flight to kolkata (without passengers or cabin crew) for a detailed technical check. This would be over and above the specified checks done and signed off in the log book by the AME after the aircraft landed.

this ferry was to probably avail of better technical facilities at kolkata, more trained staff and basically do a better and a thorough job before releasing the aircraft back into regular revenue service.

The DGCA has since de-rostered the two pilots, the maintenance in charge of spice jet, as well as, the AME at durgapur who cleared the aircraft for the ferry have been grounded pending investigation.

jiski lathi, bains, etc, etc.

if you ask 10 different dgca clowns and you will get 10 different answers.


This is also why diwali gifts from airlines tend to be very very substantial, apart from uncounted numbers of free tickets.
Encountering severe turbulence without advance warning is very unusual. Planes have weather radar, they also get near realtime weather updates from ATIS, AtC or Tower, they also get Notams / advisory from other aircrafts. But more unusual was that after encountering severe turbulence the engineers let the aircraft fly again without testing airframe from any stress related issues.
chetak
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by chetak »

sohamn wrote:
chetak wrote:

The turbulence is a random phenomenon and the air crew, in this this case, cannot really be faulted for their handling of the emergency.

You will never catch an experienced traveller with his/her seat belt unbuckled unless she/he needs to go to the toilet or something.

those passengers who were bounced about during the heavy turbulence, basically were not wearing seat belts tightened in the regulation style.

anyway, after the incident, the same aircraft was cleared for a ferry flight to kolkata (without passengers or cabin crew) for a detailed technical check. This would be over and above the specified checks done and signed off in the log book by the AME after the aircraft landed.

this ferry was to probably avail of better technical facilities at kolkata, more trained staff and basically do a better and a thorough job before releasing the aircraft back into regular revenue service.

The DGCA has since de-rostered the two pilots, the maintenance in charge of spice jet, as well as, the AME at durgapur who cleared the aircraft for the ferry have been grounded pending investigation.

jiski lathi, bains, etc, etc.

if you ask 10 different dgca clowns and you will get 10 different answers.


This is also why diwali gifts from airlines tend to be very very substantial, apart from uncounted numbers of free tickets.
Encountering severe turbulence without advance warning is very unusual. Planes have weather radar, they also get near realtime weather updates from ATIS, AtC or Tower, they also get Notams / advisory from other aircrafts. But more unusual was that after encountering severe turbulence the engineers let the aircraft fly again without testing airframe from any stress related issues.

Turbulence is often unpredictable and random. A general warning for an area is possible and sometimes other aircraft flying in the same region do report turbulence.

ATIS, ATC can give an indication of local weather but any call on weather conditions beyond the local area is a matter of prediction and advisory in nature. Even reports by other aircraft which may have transited through a particular region are no guarantee the the turbulence will persist there

In turbulence, wind speeds, gusts, direction changes et all are dynamic and constantly keep changing.

Convective turbulence may be detected by weather radars that bounce radio waves off large raindrops, and the like.

However clear-air turbulence, which occurs in the absence of clouds is a very different beast and weather radar is not of much use in such cases


Yes, there are some terrain features that can give rise to turbulence but such areas are well known and have been marked out many years ago

the phenomenon is erratic, mostly random and shifts in direction and speed of the winds, gusts and eddies making them difficult to predict

The aircraft experienced between +2.64 and -1.36G during the turbulence encounter, the autopilot disconnected and the crew took manual control of the aircraft for about 2 minutes. As result the entire fleet of Spicejet was checked.

During such extreme turbulence, at times the autopilot disconnects in some cases. It has been known to happen even on the airbus family. Checks will reveal that the autopilot will behave normally after such incidents.

there are laid down checks that the engineer would have done before he released the aircraft for the ferry.

In this weather turbulence is to be expected and that's why the seat belt on sign is continuously on

ADS-B data suggest the aircraft was descending at about 3000 fpm through FL160 when the aircraft encountered sudden speed variations between 410 and 350 knots over ground associated with climb rates of up to 2000 fpm and descend rates of up to 3000 fpm.

The affected aircraft remained on the ground for about 7 hours, then positioned to Kolkata by ferry flight

In those 7 hours, the AME would not have been munching away on garam garam pakodas, while neglecting to do his job. His inspections would have been quite thorough and he would have been in constant touch with his engineering superiors as well as the India positioned Boeing engineering reps who would have immediately reported it to boeing HQ where further advice would have been forthcoming

So those 7 hours on the ground at durgapur would have been one big and interesting engineering gabfest on an intercontinental scale.
chetak
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Re: Civil Aviation Development & Discussion

Post by chetak »

Prasad wrote:People routinely unbuckle immediately after the seat belt sign goes off after takeoff and again the second the landing gear touches the tarmac. Getting bounced during sudden turbulence is hardly surprising.


This is why I always keep my seat belt fastened tight.
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