The risk-bearing airprox incidents in Indian airspace and The number of unstabilised flight approaches during landing in the country in 2023 has significantly reduced, revealed the annual safety review for 2023 report prepared by the aviation regulator of India, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Generally, airprox refers to two aircraft being in close proximity beyond permissible limits.
As per the report, the number of unstabilised approaches that continue to land per ten thousand approaches, has shown a continuous decreasing trend with a reduction of approximately 23 per cent. DGCA in its release mentioned that this reduces the possibility of runway excursions and abnormal runway contact.
The aviation regulator further claimed that there were 25 per cent fewer risk-bearing airprox per million flights across Indian airspace. “The number of GPWS/EGPWS warnings per 10,000 departures has reduced by 92 per cent and achieved the target. This reduces the risk of controlled flight into terrain,” the release said.
Notedly, an enhanced ground proximity warning system is termed as EGPWS, while a ground proximity warning system is called a GPWS.
In accordance with the ICAO Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP), the DGCA publishes the National Aviation Safety Plan (NASP), which lists the National – High Risk Categories of Occurrences (N-HRCs). Every year, the Annual Safety Review (ASR), which evaluates NASP’s performance in terms of safety performance targets and safety performance indicators, is released. It presents the analysis of the aggregate safety data derived from the DGCA database and external sources such as ICAO iSTARS for the preceding year.
(with PTI inputs)