IndiGo Becomes Asia's First Airline To Use LPV Approach On Aircraft Equipped With GAGAN

NEW DELHI: On Thursday 28 April, the IndiGo airline conducted the LPV (Localiser Performance With Vertical Guidance) approach on its aircraft in Ajmer at Kishangarh Airport.

IndiGo owned by Interglove Aviation Limited conducted an LPV approach on its ATR 72-600 plane equipped with GAGAN (GPS aided GEO Augmented navigation).

With this successful attempt on Thursday, the company became the first airline in Asia to land using the GAGAN-aided approach.

GAGAN is a space-based augmentation system developed by ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) in collaboration with AAI (Airports Authority of India).

It was introduced to provide lateral and vertical guidance on an approach approximating the correctness of a Category I ILS (Instrument Landing System).

IndiGo Airlines has released an official statement informing about the major achievement of conducting the LPV approach and landing using.

The test flight in Ajmer is a part of the approval process with DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) under which comes the training of pilots, simulator sessions and validation of the approach.

As stated by the airlines, operators in airlines get a precise and near-precision instrument approach option through LPV capability with the lowest minima relative to different approach options in case ILS is unavailable or installed, mainly in RCS ( Regional Connectivity Scheme).

IndiGo CEO and Wholetime Director, Ronojoy Dutta said that this is a leap for Indian Civil Aviation and a strong initiative towards 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' because India is the 3rd country worldwide to have its own SBAS system.

He further said that GAGAN will change the face of civil aviation leading to several developments including fuel savings, improved flight safety, modernization of airspace and reduce flight delays.

It may be mentioned that GAGAN SBAS (Satellite-based Augmentation System) user equipment fits with all international SBAS systems including MSAS of Japan, WAAS of the United States of America and EGNOS of Europe.

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