GAGAN satellite-based aircraft landing in 3-5 years: Scindia

Civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Saturday said that the government is deploying satellite-based technology for aircraft landing.

Addressing the 40 Under 40 Awards event of the Fortune India magazine in Bengaluru, Scindia said, “Right now, our Instrument Landing System (ILS) and the CAT system are all radar controlled. But we are now employing GAGAN, which is a satellite-based technology. We have used it on two or three aircraft in the last three months. The vectors were fixed by satellite movements.”

“Using the satellite technology, we will be able to pull an aircraft into the airport, as opposed to the ground radar. That will take a lot of burden off the ATC operators and ground radar. I see that happening in the next three to five years. So that’s one area where we are using satellite technology in civil aviation,” Scindia added.

GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation, or GAGAN, is a space-based augmentation system developed jointly by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Airports Authority of India (AAI) to provide navigational services over the Indian flight information region (FIR). The system has capability of expanding to neighbouring FIRs.