OREANDA-NEWS. June 14, 2011. For the first time in the Baltic States a runway of the state enterprise Vilnius International Airport (VIA) has been granted precision approach category II (CAT II). Now, aircrafts will be able to land at the airport under special metrological conditions as the landing process has become even safer.

Until recently, aircrafts, due to difficult meteorological conditions, could not land at the main national airport 14 days per year on average. The implementation of the new system has reduced the number of bad days for landing by half up to approximately 7 days per year. Having precision approach CAT II VIA will be able to accept aircrafts from Kaunas, Riga, Tallinn and other airports, when the weather is not suitable for landing there.

“Since technical measures of the higher category have been implemented, it will be easier for aircraft pilots to land at the airport, and as a result the idle time of aircrafts due to poor weather conditions will decrease. This will enhance flight safety and make the airport more attractive to new airlines,” says Darius Okunevicius, Director of the Infrastructure Department at Vilnius Airport. He emphasises that CAT II is a prerequisite when working with certain airlines, since this category allows the airport to offer higher economic benefits – more days and hours for landing.

The Civil Aviation Administration (CAA), after a year of various procedures, has acknowledged the runway of Vilnius Airport as suitable for use under procedures of precision approach CAT II and issued a civil aerodrome airworthiness certificate. It is the first time that such a certificate has been issued in Lithuania and the Baltic States.

The runway of Vilnius Airport has been acknowledged as suitable for use under procedures of precision approach CAT II to direction 02. The civil aerodrome airworthiness certificate indicates that from now on aircrafts may approach and land following devices, where the crew’s decision height is lower than 60 meters but no lower than 30 meters, and a runway visual range is no less than 350 meters.

Until recently, Vilnius Airport applied procedures of precision approach CAT I, where a decision height was no lower than 60 meters and a visual range no less than 550 meters. A year ago the state enterprise Oro navigacija installed a new instrument landing system (ILS) and distance measuring equipment (DME). Siemens UAB, a company that was awarded a contract for the reconstruction of signal lights at the airport, has supplemented the current signalling system with 250 additional approach and landing area lights for LTL 4.86 million. Some changes were also made to the provision of meteorological information.

Airport runways may be equipped according to three different precision approach categories. Considering the traffic intensity, the costs of equipment use and maintenance and meteorological factors, Vilnius Airport will not apply for category III for now.