All airlines will have to take necessary steps to train their pilots in judicious numbers in CAT III ILS operations to prevent flight delays occurring due to low-visibility weather phenomena such as fog, smog and dust-in-suspension.

Earlier, lack of proper landing aids grounded aircraft under foggy meteorological conditions. Today, lack of adequately trained pilots causes airlines’ operations to go haywire.

Galvanised by the mushrooming airlines industry and spurred by the public outcry over avoidable delays, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) finally took some concrete steps to install appropriate categories of instrument landing systems (ILS) at some of the metro airports. Delhi, for one, boasts of a Cat III (B) ILS while Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata are known to have Cat II systems. The Indira Gandhi International Airport at Delhi is the worst affected due to fog during winter months and, therefore, has a better category ILS to match the reduced Runway Visual Ranges (RVRs). A Cat III (B) instrument landing system permits a pilot to land off a precision approach with a runway visual range as low as 50 m and practically no limit to decision height. With this kind of capability, it would only be on the rarest of rare occasions when meteorological conditions would not permit an incoming flight to land or an outgoing flight to take-off at Delhi airport.

Appropriate training and type endorsement for Cat III (B) instrument rating for the pilots in command before they are permitted to operate in such weather minima are, however, the prerequisites, and therein lies the catch. A pilot has to not only meet a set of stringent eligibility requirements but also clear a set of relevant ground subjects and flying tests conducted by qualified examiners before being conferred the appropriate rating and endorsement. Needless to say, it is not easy.