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Delhi Indira Gandhi Approach Control

VIDP / DEL — India

Delhi Indira Gandhi (VIDP / DEL) is one of the real-world terminal areas you can control in the free ATC Radar Simulator. Its approach (APP) airspace — centred near 28°34.1'N 77°6.7'E in India — is modelled with real runways, radio navaids and instrument procedures. As the approach controller you sequence arriving traffic onto the ILS approach, launch departures on their standard instrument departures, and keep every flight safely separated on the radar.

Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International is India’s busiest airport and the main hub for Air India and IndiGo, sitting on the south-western edge of the capital. It runs four runways — 09/27, 10/28, 11R/29L and the newest, 11L/29R — and nearly every one of its eight runway ends has an ILS, a fleet of approaches built for the dense winter fog that settles over the north Indian plain.

Delhi works westerly for most of the year, and its runways are run in pairs: in the segregated westerly mode one of the 29s takes arrivals while its parallel takes departures, and 27 and 28 are coupled the same way, so two independent systems operate side by side. Every arrival route is published open-ended — the STARs from the west, north, east and south all stop short of the field, east of it, and from there controllers vector each aircraft onto the localizer. In December and January, fog can drop visibility to almost nothing for days, and the airport keeps landing on CAT III.

Runways

Runways 10, 28, 11L, 29R, 11R, 29L, 09, 27 are equipped with an ILS (Instrument Landing System) — a localizer for lateral guidance and a glideslope for the descent path down to the threshold. In the simulator you turn arrivals onto the extended centreline, clear them for the approach, and watch them capture the localizer and glideslope automatically.

Radio navaids

VOR/DME: AGGALICHGCHIDPNJALJJPLKASAM
NDB: HWSP

Standard arrivals (STARs)

Standard departures (SIDs)

The terminal airspace

• Transition level: FL60 — below it aircraft fly altitudes on the local QNH; at or above it they fly standard flight levels.
• Upper limit: FL100 — overflights cross the sector below this level.
• Entry / exit fixes on the boundary: AGGALICHGCHIDPNHWJALJJPLKASAMSPAKBANAKRIBAKSAM

How to control Delhi Indira Gandhi in the simulator

Delhi is a vectoring airport by design. Its thirteen STARs converge on just three points east of the field — FS711 to the south-east, FE522 to the east and FN614 to the north-east — so the real work is merging those streams into one evenly spaced line for final: take them down to 2,600 ft at the end of the STAR and turn them in to intercept, as the published procedure expects. Arrivals start a long way out, some beyond 140 NM from Bikaner and Jalalabad, so use the sim-rate control while they cross the plain, and keep departures climbing through Delhi Approach’s FL100 ceiling.

Pick Delhi Indira Gandhi when you start a session, then double-click an aircraft's data block to assume it. Give it radar headings, climb or descend it to a level and control its speed to build an orderly stream toward the runway. Turn arrivals onto final, clear them for the ILS, and keep at least 3 NM and 1,000 ft between aircraft — the short-term conflict alert (STCA) warns you before a loss of separation. New to it? Read the guide to approach radar control and the ATC glossary first.