Advanced Tech Aid Planes at Nyingchi Airport
The Hindu | Sep. 03, 2006
China, which has inaugurated Tibet's third civilian airport in mountainous Nyingchi Prefecture close to India and Myanmar, has deployed an advanced and expensive navigational technology to ensure flight safety and reliability in the hostile conditions.
Air China has deployed four Boeing 757 planes especially fitted with a facility known as "Required Navigation Performance" (RNP) to fly the Chengdu-Nyingchi air route.
The RNP fitting, which cost 24 million yuan (about $3 million), will help to reduce flight delays due to unfavourable weather factors and also improve the plateau airport's capabilities of handling air passenger and cargo transport, Xinhua news agency reported.
Currently, only six Chinese pilots are capable of flying such Boeing planes on the Chengdu-Nyingchi air route whose narrowest section is just 3.8 km off from cliff walls on both sides.
China commissioned the third civil airport in Tibet Autonomous Region on Friday.
Nyingchi Airport, the third civilian airport in Tibet after Lhasa and Qamdo, has a 3,000-meter runway and is surrounded by mountains. It was completed in April this year.
Built at a cost of 780 million yuan ($96.18 million), the airport is 2,949 meters above sea level, lower than the other two civil airports, with a designed annual passenger flow of 1,20,000.
Because of its location, the airport is considered difficult to fly into. Meteorological records show it will have about 100 operational days a year.