Calcutta airport will be a safer place to land and take off from this winter. Category II Instrumental Landing System (ILS), available only at Mumbai airport in India, will be installed here to aid flight operations in low-visibility conditions. Delhi airport has Category IIIA ILS, the most advanced in the country.

The Rs 6-crore Category II ILS project, being executed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the airport Met department, is expected to be ready in October, in time for the winter fog.

Once in place, the system will allow pilots to land even if visibility is as low as 350 metres, said AAI officials. Currently, a pilot cannot risk landing at Calcutta airport if visibility is less than 550 metres. The minimum decision height — the height from which a pilot takes the decision to land — will come down from a minimum of 60 m to a minimum of 30 m.

Mid-Runway Visual Range (MRVR) equipment, the key component of Category II ILS, will be installed at the airport in September. “The machine has arrived at the port and work on the runway for its installation has started,” a senior airport official told Metro.

Category II ILS lighting was completed in the city last year but the facility is not yet available as MRVR equipment has not been installed.

While Category I lights are placed on the runway, Category II lights are embedded in it. This helps to increase their intensity, explained an airport official.

On an average, about 170 flights land and take off from Calcutta every day. According to airport officials, more than 10 per cent of the flights fail to land due to poor visibility and around 20 per cent operate behind schedule. “There will be less diversion of flights this winter,” asserted an official.

“An expert from Finland will come down to Calcutta to help with the installation,” stated A.K. Das, director-in-charge of the airport Met office. Pune Met office will provide technical expertise.

The airport is also likely to don a new look by the time the system is introduced. The resurfacing of the domestic lounge would be completed this month. Next, a conveyor belt with built-in X-ray will be installed in the departure zone. X-rays will also be fitted to the two conveyor belts in use.