The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has selected Honeywell’s SmartPath ground-based augmentation system (GBAS) as part of a pilot project to launch satellite-based approaches and landings at Chennai International Airport.
The pilot project is part of the U.S.-India Aviation Cooperation Program, partially funded by the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), Honeywell said. Passenger demand at Chennai is expected to grow to 540 million annually over the next 12 years, and AAI is looking to use the SmartPath system to meet the future demand.
SmartPath will enable Chennai to support up to 26 separate approaches across four runways simultaneously, compared to traditional Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) that usually support one approach at one end of a single runway, the company said.
“Chennai International is India’s third busiest airport, handling over 10.5 million passengers each year, and with this number continuing to rise we believe investment in innovations such as SmartPath holds the key to cost-effectively meeting future demand,” said V.P. Agrawal, chairman of AAI. More
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