If it was concrete instead, wouldn't it be safer (if the aircraft skids off the runway while landing)?
At first, I would like to share a short story with you about how shoe was invented.
' Once upon a time there was a king. He was very upset about one thing that whenever he goes around his kingdom, his feet get dirty due to muck on the road. Finally he ordered his ministers to cover the complete globe with leather. The ministers kept on convincing him about the difficulty in implementation of such decision. But the king was unmoved. Finally they called for meeting and came across on a unique idea. They went to the king and told, "Me lord how about covering your feet with leather instead of the globe. Either way the muck would not touch your feet". And thus the shoe was invented. Probably that was something like this.
Now coming the topic. You can not have concrete everywhere in an airfield. There are various reasons behind it.
(1) The runway is a layered construction and it has different categories based on strength. This decides how much heavy load it can handle. It is identified with pavement classification number (PCN) which is an International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standard. The Kadhdhoo (VRMK) Aerodrome has PCN 15 Bituminous.
Here, how the layers are made.
You can not afford to have this kind of ground work done in complete airfield.
(2) How much extra potion should we cover? The aircraft can skid and go to even out of the airport.
(3) Lastly the most important one. The soft ground around the runway is responsible for saving the aircraft. The aircraft wheels get jammed in the soft ground and the aircraft stops. See the picture below. Had the sides been concrete, the aircraft would have been down the hills in pieces.
The government has decided to convert the airport in L. Kadhdhoo into a military airport.
Speaking to a local media, Colonel Retired Muhammad Naazim, the Minister of
Defence, said that the airport has been handed over to his ministry for
the work of transformation. He also said that the necessary work would
be done and the airport would begin operations as a military airport
starting from the coming January.
The Minister said helicopters used by the Maldives National Defence
Force would be relocated there that when the transformation is complete.
He also said that the ministry is trying to get aircrafts to be used by
the MNDF with the new facility.
The Minister said that domestic flight operations would continue
uninterrupted, and that new jobs would be created at the Airport with
the change.
“This would not disturb the domestic flights. Our facilities would be
installed there, and new jobs would be created”, said the Minister.
Vice President of MATCA Amhaar working at the air traffic control tower at Ibrahim Nasir International Airport (INIA)
The Maldives Air Traffic Controllers Association
(MATCA) has joined the International Federation of Air Traffic
Controllers Association (IFATCA) - the international organisation of air
traffic controllers.
IFATCA Meeting
MATCA's president Saddam
Ahmed Saeed and secretary Yusuf Naeem took part in IFATCA's 59th annual
general meeting, which was held in Spain on Friday.
The vice
president of MATCA Amhaar Mahraan Mohamed told Haveeru on Sunday that
being a member of an international organisation is a massive development
for the 60-member MATCA, and that this would also be a huge
encouragement to further improve the security of Maldivian air traffic.
"The
international federation usually gives advice on improvement techniques
and keeps us updated on new developments in the field. One of the
biggest objectives of the association is to provide professional
opinions and strengthen air transport facilities. We will be granted all
these opportunities now that we are also a member there," he said.
Amhaar
said that MATCA works together with the state run Maldives Airports
Company (MACL), and that their membership with IFATCA will further
develop their relationship to bring about air transport improvements.
"They
send invites to their annual meetings only to those they see fit. That
is how we got invited this year. We believe that this proves that the
federation accepts all our efforts since the creation of MATCA in 2008,"
Amhaar said.
IFATCA has more than 130 air traffic control organisations as members, summing up to more than 50,000 air traffic controllers.
Fresh objects spotted by planes searching for a missing Malaysian
passenger jet in a new area of the southern Indian Ocean have again
raised hopes of unravelling the three-week-old mystery.
Australian
authorities coordinating the operation dramatically moved the air and
sea search 1,100 km north on Friday after new analysis of radar and
satellite data concluded Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 travelled faster
and for a shorter distance after vanishing from civilian radar screens
on March 8.
Australia said late on Friday that five international
aircraft had spotted "multiple objects of various colours" in the new
search area some 1,850 km west of Perth.
A map of the new search area for missing
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Photograph: Australian Maritime Safety
Authority/Getty Images
Flight Lieutenant Jamin Baker was on a New Zealand Air Force Orion
which spotted several items and dropped a marker buoy in "an area of
interest".
"Obviously we don't know if these (objects) are
associated with the aircraft yet but it certainly looks like we are
seeing a lot more debris and just general flotsam in the water, so we
could be on to something here," Baker said.
One Chinese navy ship
was in the area and would be trying to recover objects on Saturday,
while other ships were steaming to the area, the Australian Maritime
Safety Authority said.
Malaysia says the Boeing 777, which
vanished less than an hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing,
was likely diverted deliberately but investigators have turned up no
apparent motive or other red flags among the 227 passengers or the 12
crew.
US officials close to the investigation said the FBI found
nothing illuminating in data it had received from computer equipment
used by MH370's pilots, including a home-made flight simulator.
The
search has involved more than two dozen countries and 60 aircraft and
ships but has been bedevilled by regional rivalries and an apparent
reluctance to share potentially crucial information due to security
concerns.
Malaysian officials said the new search area was the
result of a painstaking analysis of Malaysian military radar data and
satellite readings from British company Inmarsat carried out by US,
Chinese, British and Malaysian investigators.
Engine performance
analysis by the plane's manufacturer, Boeing, helped investigators
determine how long the plane could have flown before it ran out of fuel
and crashed into the ocean, they said.
"Information which had
already been examined by the investigation was re-examined in light of
new evidence drawn from the Inmarsat data analysis," Malaysia's acting
Transport Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, told a news conference on
Friday.
For more than a week, ships and surveillance planes had
been scouring seas 2,500 km south-west of Perth, where satellite images
had shown possible debris from Flight MH370. That search zone has now
been abandoned.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB)
said the shift was based on analysis of radar data between the South
China Sea and the Strait of Malacca. At that time, the Boeing 777 was
making a radical diversion west from its course.
Malaysia's civil
aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, said at Friday's news
conference he was "not at liberty" to give the exact path of the
aircraft.
Officials close to the investigation told Reuters last
week that the plane may have passed close to Port Blair, the capital of
India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 885 km further north-west from
where Malaysia has said its military radar last detected it.
At
around 319,000 sq km – roughly the size of Poland – the new search area
is larger, but closer to Perth, allowing aircraft to spend longer on
site. It is also favourable in terms of the weather as it is out of the
Roaring 40s, the the deep sea region known for its huge seas and
storm-force winds.
Searchers have perhaps a week to find debris,
calculate the likely crash area and find the aircraft's voice and data
"black boxes" before batteries showing their location run out.
Malaysia Airlines plane was going faster than previously thought, meaning its tanks would have run dry sooner, say authorities.
An Australian air force crew in the cockpit of an Orion plane searching
for flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean.
The Australian-led search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
has shifted 1,100km to the north-east after investigators calculated
the plane was going faster and using more fuel when it disappeared than
previously thought.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority
(Amsa) said the analysis was based on the plane's final radar contacts
between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca, and suggested the
plane would have burned more fuel in the opening stages of its flight.
It therefore would not have made it as far into the Indian Ocean before
running out of fuel and crashing.
The new target location means
planes are able to spend longer over the search area, and with the
prospect of much better weather because it is away the notoriously foul
conditions of the "roaring forties"between the latitudes of 40 and 50
degrees south. Previously aircraft had been consuming much of their fuel
and their time just getting out to sea and returning. This left limited
capacity to remain "on-scene", said John Young, general manager of the
Amsa emergency response division.
"We will certainly get
better time on scene. We started nearly
3,000km from Perth so we've taken quite a lot off that. You might
recall we were talking in terms of one to two hours on-scene. We're now
doing much better than that.
"The other benefit we get from the north is the search area
has moved out of the roaring forties, which creates very adverse weather
frequently. I'm not sure we'll get perfect weather out there but it's
likely to be better more often than we've seen in the past."
Australia's Geospatial Intelligence Organisation is reprogramming
satellites to image the new area. "We will see what that does in terms
of satellite imagery when
the retasking of satellite starts to produce new material as well,"
Young said.
Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister, said the
"new and credible lead" had resulted in the search area being shifted to
an area of about 319,000 square kilometres centred on a point 1,850km
west of Perth.
The US has sent another search plane to join the hunt
after Thailand became the latest country to announce satellite imagery
showing hundreds of pieces of possible debris in the Indian Ocean west
of Australia.
The United States said it was sending a second
P-8 Poseidon aircraft to Perth but would not be sending a warship. "We
believe – and just as importantly, the Malaysian government believes –
that the most important asset that we have that we can help them with
are these long-range maritime patrol aircraft," said Rear Admiral John
Kirby.
The commanding officer of Australia's HMAS Success, Captain
Allison Norris, said she had instituted hourly shift changes to make
sure crews' attention did not stray from scanning the vast and remote
stretch of ocean notorious for its rapidly changing weather conditions.
The warship is leading the seaborne search in a multinational effort
that on Friday resumed with 10 aircraft setting out to join the five
ships already at sea.
Norris told the Sydney Morning Herald that
supervisors on the Success were constantly reminding crew "what they're
there for and keeping them focused".
"Morale remains good despite the cold conditions," she said.
Amsa
said that as well as the planes already involved, the Australian air
force was putting another P3 Orion on standby in case of a debris
sighting.
Thailand's Geo-Informatics and Space Technology
Development Agency has said images taken on Monday showed about 300
objects ranging in size from two to 15 metres. The information was
passed to Malaysian authorities. Thai satellite images taken as part of the plane search Photograph: Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency
It said the objects were scattered over an area about 2,700km (1,680
miles) south-west of Perth and about 200km from an area pinpointed
earlier in French satellite photos. "But we cannot – dare not – confirm
they are debris from the plane," said Anond Snidvongs, the executive
director of the Thai space agency.
Japan also announced a
satellite analysis indicated about 10 square floating objects in a
similar area, the Kyodo news agency said. Japanese authorities said the
objects were up to eight metres in length and four metres wide, with
Jiji Press citing an official at the office as saying they were "highly
likely" to be from the plane.
Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transportation Safety
Bureau, said the original search zone had a range of possible
assumptions about aircraft speed that had now been refined.
"It
is an iterative process and is being refined over time but what we
have at the moment is the most credible location of the entry to the
water and therefore the place to search," he said.
Sorties
being flown by planes from Australia, China, Japan and the United States
were forced back to Perth on Thursday as thunderstorms and gale force
winds swept through the southern Indian Ocean, although the five ships
stayed put. Amsa said the air search was able to start again on Friday.
The
Malaysia Airlines jet vanished on 8 March with 239 people on board
after taking off from Kuala Lumpur and then inexplicably turning off its
China-bound course. All contact was lost except for a series of "pings"
from a transmitter on the plane to a satellite that were used to plot
its probable course into the deep south of the Indian Ocean.
The
arrival of sensitive tracking equipment to help locate the plane's
"black boxes" offers a glimmer of hope for a breakthrough in what has
become the biggest mystery in commercial aviation history.
An
Australian naval vessel ship will sweep the seabed by towing an
underwater listening device deep below the surface in the hope of
picking up an ultrasonic signal from one or both of the plane's black
box recorders, while a small submersible drone will be used to scan the
sea floor for signs of wreckage.
Search teams are hoping that the detection equipment will be able to
pick up acoustic pings emitted every second from the plane's black box
flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.
Each of the two
recorders has a beacon, attached to the outside of the black box, which
once activated by contact with water makes a sound every second. The
beacons have a battery life of 30 days, sometimes longer, before the
pings begin to fade. Assuming the plane crashed on 8 March, as Malaysian
officials insist, that means the beacons aboard MH370 will begin to
fade about 7 April and could go silent about 12 April.
Theories
about the plane's fate include a hijacking, pilot sabotage or a crisis
that incapacitated the crew and left the plane to fly on autopilot until
it ran out of fuel.
The focus has been on the pilot, Captain
Zaharie Ahmad Shah, with the FBI analysing data from a flight simulator
taken from his home. So far no information implicating the captain or
anyone else has emerged and his youngest son, Ahmad Seth, on Thursday
dismissed speculation his father may have crashed the plane
intentionally.
Agence France-Presse and AAP contributed to this report to the http://www.theguardian.com
MUMBAI:
India's tallest air traffic control tower, the height of a 30-storey
skyscraper, was commissioned at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International
Airport here on Wednesday, 1st January 2014, an official said.
The ATC operations
here have been taken over by the new tower, which stands at 83.8
metres, over 20 metres higher than the existing structure.
The
new tower, built at a cost of around Rs.1.25 billion (Rs.125 crore/$20
million) affords an uninterrupted five-mile 360-degrees view of the
surroundings for better navigation and surveillance.
However, its distinction will be short-lived as the new ATC tower in New Delhi is expected to stand 102 metres tall.
Equipped with the latest technology in communications, navigation and
surveillance (CNS) systems, the new ATC has a capacity of handling 46
flight operations per hour, including around 750 take-offs and landings,
and controlling other air traffic movements like international air
traffic in a 24-hour cycle making it among the busiest in the country.
The swank, new ATC tower was inaugurated in October this year and since
then was working in co-ordination with the old ATC tower before the
formal migration took place on Wednesday.
To be manned by
around 10 ATC controllers and a dozen engineers in each shift, the new
ATC tower is spread over 2,884 square metres with an award-winning
design.
The old ATC tower will be soon be demolished and will
enable the GVK Group that runs the airport provide more amenities and
facilities to improve operations and efficiency at the airport.
Theguardian.com,
Prime minister Tony Abbott announces search planes being sent based on ‘new and credible information’ from satellite images
Search planes are on their way to assess at least two objects in the
southern Indian Ocean that could be connected to missing Malaysia
Airlines flight MH370, Australian authorities have announced.
Four
aircraft have been sent to the area after a “possible indication of
debris” was detected in satellite imagery, said the Australian Maritime
Safety Authority (Amsa), which is co-ordinating the search in the
southern Indian Ocean.
Amsa’s emergency response general manager,
John Young, said the largest possible object had been assessed as
measuring 24 metres. The satellite sightings were made 2,500km (1,500
miles) south-west of Perth.
The Australian prime minister, Tony
Abbott, told parliament on Thursday that the “new and credible
information” had emerged from expert analysis of satellite imagery. His
announcement came 12 days after Beijing-bound MH370 went missing on 8
March shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital,
with 239 people on board.
Abbott said an Australian air force
Orion had been diverted to look for the objects, with three more
aircraft following for a more intensive follow-up search. He added that
he had informed the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, of the
developments.
Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister, briefs parliament in Canberra on the possible debris sighting.
Abbott cautioned against drawing premature
conclusions. “We must keep in mind the task of locating these objects
will be extremely difficult and it may turn out that they are not
related to the search for flight MH370.
“Nevertheless I did want to update the house on this potentially important development.”
Earlier, Amsa said it had halved the search area in the Indian Ocean
– albeit to an area still covering 300,000 square kilometres – and
moved it closer to Perth.
Young, the Amsa chief, said after
Abbott’s announcement that the objects were “relatively indistinct” on
the satellite imagery but were of “reasonable size and probably awash
with water … bobbing up and down in the water”.
“We have been in
this business of doing search and rescue and using satellite images
before,” Young said. “They do not always turn out to be related to the
search even if they look good, so we will hold our views on that until
they are sighted.”
The Orion had reported initial poor visibility,
which would hamper both air and satellite efforts. The other aircraft
due to arrive later on Thursday included a New Zealand air force Orion
and a United States navy P8 Poseidon.
An Australian C130 Hercules
aircraft would drop marker buoys to track currents that could carry any
debris elsewhere. “They will provide an ongoing reference point if the
task of relocating the objects becomes protracted,” Young said.
“Royal
Australian Navy warship HMAS Success is en route to the area but is
some days away from this area. She is well equipped to recover any
objects located and proven to be from MH370.”
Australia’s Defence
Imagery and Geospatial Organisation provided the assessment of the
satellite imagery, Amsa said. A senior Australian military official, Air
Commodore John McGarry, said the satellite material was credible enough
to divert search efforts to the area involved.
Malaysia Airlines
flight MH370 went missing almost two weeks ago. Australia has taken
charge of the search mission over a potential southern flight path since
it was revealed that the plane appeared to have continued flying for
hours after the last contact was made with Malaysian air traffic
authorities.
Malaysian officials said on Wednesday that both the
northern and southern search arcs delineated by analysis of satellite
data – sweeping north to Kazakhstan and down to the southern Indian
Ocean – remained of equal interest. On Thursday, after Abbott announced
the intensive new focus of the search, Malaysian authorities responded
by saying that there had been a possible new development.
The
search is a multinational effort involving 26 countries. On Wednesday
Barack Obama said finding out what happened to MH370 was a top priority
for the United States.
The BBC suggested in a report that the investigation was focusing on the ends of the two arcs.
It also suggested that the plane had continued to move between its last
known radar sighting at either 2.15am or 2.40am and its last contact
with a satellite was at 8.11am.
The total search area set out by
Malaysian authorities, covering a total of 2.24m square nautical miles,
was based on initial analysis of the signals the plane sent to
satellites.
Malaysian authorities have said the missing plane’s 12 crew members have been under investigation since the aircraft disappeared
and that the homes of the pilot and co-pilot have been visited twice by
police. The pilot’s flight simulator was taken from his house on
Sunday, the Malaysian transport ministry said.
Obama, the US
president, said earlier that every available resource was being used in
the search, including the FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board
and other agencies dealing with aviation. Three Americans were on board
the flight.
Obama added: “It’s a big piece of planet that we’re
searching and sometimes these things take time, but we hope and pray
that we can get to the bottom of what happened.”
Search area for the Australian search has
been reduced to 300,000 square kilometres from 600,000 square kilometres
Photograph: Xinhua/Landov/Barcroft Media
