Airports Authority of India inks ₹945 cr deal with US firm to secure data, manage air traffic

In order to secure data of airports and efficiently manage air traffic, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) on Thursday signed a Rs945 crore contract with a US-based technology firm. The 15-year contract with Harris Corporation was signed in the presence of officials of the civil aviation ministry and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) during the sixth edition of the bi-annual US-India Aviation Summit.

The contract involves developing futuristic telecommunications programme that can prevent situations such as the one in April 2016 when multiple radars, which monitor flight movements beyond 200 nautical miles, and an important VHF-radio link went off at the Kolkata airport due to a glitch in the BSNL network, which affected air traffic.

Senior officials said the new system will play a key role in deployment of remote towers for managing air traffic services at airports under the central government’s Regional Connectivity Scheme. 

AAI chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra said, “Telecommunication infrastructure provides a dedicated nationwide telecommunication network to support ATM operations, with an emphasis on safety and high reliability and the ability to expand for growth.” 

As part of the contract, Harris Corporation will serve as a prime contractor and systems integrator for two years. A senior AAI official said the first phase of developing technology will be ready for use in Mumbai around July. AAI officials said performance of all telecommunication links will be continuously monitored at the Network Operation Control Centre (NOCC) to be set up in Delhi and Bengaluru for various performance parameters to meet the global air traffic management (ATM) application performance requirement. 

 AAI in its media release said Harris Corporation will upgrade network operations, enhance security, and improve the performance, reliability and quality of the country’s air traffic management communications network, and also reduce telecommunications costs. 

This technology will help the country airports to centrally monitor telecommunications and every network round-the-clock so that an untoward situation like an outage can be tackled and fixed immediately before the networks get adversely affected.

AAI stated that Security Operation Control Centre (SOCC) at Delhi and Bangalore will protect the network from cyber threats. “All service connections and every equipment will be security-hardened, monitored, and safeguarded against intrusion with constant system updates against latest security threats,” AAI said.