123 Kolkata: In a safety and operations efficiency boost, Kolkata airport now has an Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS) that provides real-time accurate weather information to pilots.
It enables them to make informed decisions about landing, take-off, and flight planning. This is helpful especially in adverse weather conditions like heavy storms and rain. Unlike the earlier system, where each parameter like temperature, wind speed and shear, relative humidity, runway visibility range, and cloud height were individually available and needed to be checked separately to assess the conditions for a flight, AWOS integrates all the data to ensure that users have all the information to make an informed decision.
The AWOS facility, inaugurated on Wednesday, will also help the airport operator, AAI in Kolkata, assess the meteorological situation to make decisions on aircraft operations. Air traffic controllers can use AWOS information to efficiently manage aircraft movements and coordinate runway usage.
"AWOS will ensure that no relevant meteorological data is missed by either pilots or airport officials. The system is on par with what is there at other world-class airports," said Airport Met office director, GK Das.
Besides reducing the risk of accidents, access to real-time weather data can also help pilots make better decisions about landing or diverting to an alternate airport, reducing delays and cancellations. The AWOS sensors that collect the data have been installed at six observing stations, also called Met parks, along the primary runway at Kolkata airport.
These will feed real-time data into the system, which will process the data centrally to make it available in a composite format.