IndiGo becomes first airline in Asia to land using GAGAN aided approach
Apr 28, 2022
New Delhi [India], April 28 : IndiGo on Thursday said it has become the first Airline in Asia to conduct Localiser Performance with Vertical Guidance (LPV) approach.
"This is a huge leap for Indian Civil Aviation and a firm step towards Aatmanirbhar Bharat, as India becomes the third country in the world to have their own SBAS system after the USA and Japan. GAGAN will be a game-changer for civil aviation, leading to modernisation of the airspace, reducing flight delays, bringing in fuel savings and improving flight safety," Ronojoy Dutta, whole-time director and CEO, IndiGo, said in a statement.
IndiGo conducted the LPV approach on its ATR 72-600 aircraft, equipped with GAGAN, at Kishangarh Airport (Ajmer) on Thursday.
This test flight is a part of the approval process with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), which includes training of pilots, validation of approach, simulator sessions among others.
GAGAN, an acronym for GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation, is an indigenously developed Space Based Augmentation System (SBAS), jointly developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Airports Authority of India (AAI) to provide lateral and vertical guidance on an approach, approximating the accuracy of a Category I ILS.
LPV capability provides the airline operators a precise and near-precision instrument approach option with the lowest minima relative to other approach options, when Instrument Landing System (ILS) is either not installed or unavailable, especially in case of the regional connectivity scheme (RCS) airports.
