An integrated automatic aviation meteorological instrument system at C. S. I. airport, Mumbai

Abstract

An ‘Integrated Automatic Aviation Meteorological Instrument System’ (IAAMS) is installed at
Mumbai International Airport in May-2008. The system is State-of-the-Art and has features like automatic generation of
aviation reports; METAR / SPECI, AFTN (Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network) connectivity for
dissemination of aviation weather reports to user agencies and ATIS (Automatic Terminal Interface System) for
automatic broadcasting of aviation weather reports to airborne pilot. Besides these features system is having facility to
enter manually weather parameter for which sensors are not available such as cloud coverage, past weather, present
weather for generation of aviation reports. The system meets the requirements of operational desirable accuracy of
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, 2004) and vector averaging of winds as per World Meteorological
Organization guidelines (WMO, 1992). The paper is mainly focusing on the different technical features of this new
system along with its observational response in last one year at Mumbai airport. Similar system has been installed at other
major airports; New Delhi (4 sites), Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Amritsar, Jaipur, and Guwahati. The system is
supplied and installed by Telvent Company, Australia.