GAGAN certification programme crossed yet another milestone on August 13 when KN Srivastava, Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation released the GAGAN Certification documents to Arun Mishra, Director General of Civil Aviation in the presence of VP Agrawal, Chairman AAI in a function organised by Airports Authority of India at the Corporate Headquarters, Delhi.
More than 150 documents/artifacts prepared for GAGAN from the stage of its initial conception to the stage of operational testing and evaluation, reviews conducted by expert groups were on display.
V Somasundaram, Member (Air Navigational Services), briefing on the occasion, stated that the development of documents have been the collective effort of ISRO, AAI and DGCA for the past four years and is a milestone for certification process. The GAGAN certification process is the first unique exercise where the regulator, DGCA officials have worked in tandem with service providers and system developers to reach the current milestone. India will soon have the GAGAN operationalised initially meeting Required Navigation Performance specifications of 0.1 for en-route and non-precision approach operations and subsequently GAGAN will be operationalised for Approach with Vertical approach guidance providing IlS like approaches to most of the Runway ends. GAGAN will be the fourth operational SBAS in the world leading Indian Aviation into the era of GNSS.
KN Srivastava, Secretary, speaking on the occasion, complemented the entire team for the milestone progress. He urged DGCA and AAI to take up with the airline operators for appropriate aircraft equipage ensuring a successful business models are prepared and time bound plan is worked out. The market for GAGAN beyond aviation was large and stated that appropriate business models is required to be developed to ensure benefits of technology to reach wherever the signal-in space is available for such use. He also stated that GAGAN expansion program to outside India should be taken up for ensuring seamless GAGAN services availability within Asia Pacific region.