NEWS FLASH
Airports of Montenegro, the company which manages the country's two international airports - Podgorica and Tivat - has said it is committed to enabling Tivat Airport to handle traffic during night time hours after a tender for the selection of a consultant tasked with conducting a feasibility study into the matter was annulled. The General Manager of Airports of Montenegro, Danilo Orlandić, said a new tender would be launched soon. The initial public call garnered three bids - Navblue from France, Jeppesen Sanderson from the United States and GE Aviation Digital, also from the States. However, the tender commission declared all offers invalid.
Since its opening over sixty years ago, Tivat Airport has only worked during daylight and does not have the necessary runway lighting equipment to remain open past sundown. "There is no justification in the 21st century for an airport located in a world-renowned tourist destination not to posses new and modern technology. The inability to handle traffic between sunset and sunrise burdens Tivat Airport during the daytime and leads to congestion over the summer when it caters for up to sixty aircraft and 10.000 passengers in a single day", the Board of Directors of Airports of Montenegro said in a statement recently.
I agree, technology has developed so much and similar airports of less importance and traffic changed from ugly duckling to swans, why it's hard to understand why nothing major yet is happening in Tivat.
ReplyDeleteBut to boost safety and operational capacity, they should first ensure the radar coverage. They have some coverage from Podgorica as well Dubrovnik, which with optimizations and some investments can fully cover Tivat and increase it current operational capacity.
Second optionally to have a bypass taxiway near threshold 32 accommodating at least one medium sized aircraft to hereby have more efficient operations, especially as the parallel taxiway saga is never ending.
If a airport as Split, with backtrack on both runways can have 250+ movements a summer peak day and operations usually only until around midnight, Tivat should be able to get it higher too, despite its limited apron size, which isn't the bottle neck here.
Despite the fact that proper lightning, including obstacles always is a plus, night operations and connected investments are in my point of view as of now unecessary, so long the above criteria are met.
Why were the previous tenders annulled?
ReplyDeleteI am sure JU will be the first airline to add night flights, not only in summer but winter as well!
But does anyone know why the airport was not initially designed to handle night flights?
ReplyDeleteI am really surprised, I though all major airports are able to handle flights anytime or open 24/7.
What are the airport working hours then?
Working hours are dawn to dusk, often up to an hour befire/after if a flight is early/late and the weather and visual ground contact permits it, always at the operating crews discretion.
DeleteIt was not designed due to the airport location and unecessary cost at the initial stage, where there was much less demand. General ex-Yu low tech concept following the demand and trend, which was great until 20 years ago, but also little happening since.
Currently the demand is more but still a question of luxury than real need, and I personally would refuse to fly into Tivat by night, as it's not worth the risk.
The airport is surrounded by high terrain and subject to visual landing procedure from both sides, more tricky visual/circling approach from north into 14 via the bay and some easier but still demanding offset localizer approach into runway 32 from the south. Both originating via TAZ NDB south of the airport, which also is the separation reporting point.
The 32 procedure final part after TAZ NDB is very similar to what Mostar had until implementing IGS approach on its runway 34 which though still requires visual ground contact as autoland is not possible on such offset approaches and missed approach procedure is much more demanding and risky at night and in non radar covered airspace.
Furthermore to allow these operations at night, all the obstacles in the approach and missed approach zones need to be determined, documented, tested, approved, marked and published. Maybe crew even needing a special training flight and minimal number of take offs and landings at that airport, as it's the case at several other demanding low infrastructure mountainous airports. Still without any guarantee that it can't go bad.
Also reason why other airports, such as Sarajevo (unpublished) circling 30 or Innsbruck (published) circling 26 are daytime VMC only and not worth being implemented for night operations vs the financial and potential human cost.
But of course, the technology improves and anything can happen in the future, which in some parts of our region is being followed while other still decades away, as we many places still have procedural/non radar covered airports with minimal equipment, while even 3rd countries have bypassed us on that one and boosted their potential and tourism.
Thank you so much for the details, Interesting stuff indeed.
DeleteIt seems that it is a difficult to approach airport and I suppose that having this equipment comes with a dear price.
News from today(17.09.2019.): NAVBLUE
ReplyDeletehttps://investitor.me/2019/09/17/airbusov-nav-blue-uvodi-nocni-saobracaj-na-aerodromu-tivat/