Navi Mumbai: Amid unpredictable weather conditions, seamless travel in different parts of the country have been affected. The efforts are underway to tackle adverse weather conditions such as fog at several airports. 

In Navi Mumbai International Airport, a Master Plan has been prepared under which North runway will be made CAT-III. South runway of the airport is already using CAT-III tech. 

In aviation, Category III, or CAT III, refers to a type of instrument landing system (ILS) approach that allows aircraft to land in conditions of very low visibility, such as fog, rain, or snow with runway visual range of 50-200 metres. Separately, CAT-II is precision instrument approach with a runway visual range not less than 350m.

The Mumbai region doesn't face fog like conditions as seen in Delhi-NCR and other parts of the country. However, to deal with changing climatic conditions and heavy rainfall, CAT-III compliant runways have become the best choice for safety and seamless runway operations. 

 Currently, India has only six airports with capability to allow landings in conditions of extremely low visibility or CAT-IIIB conditions.

“In 2014, we had only one airport that had CAT-III approval and that was Delhi. Today we have six airports that are CAT-III including Lucknow, Kolkata, Amritsar, Jaipur, Bengaluru and Delhi," Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had said last week.

“This is an evolving phenomenon. We have a number of airports that are CAT-I, II enabled for example Ayodhya is already CAT-1 enabled. This will keep evolving. Many runways which are CAT-II enabled will become CAT-III...This is an evolving scenario, one that we are pushing as far as possible," Scindia said.