The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) of the Republic of Korea recently announced that a new air traffic flow management system that significantly reduces flight departure delays to the Vietnamese central city of Da Nang was put into official operation from August 15.

There is an average of 24 flights per day (around 8,700 flights a year) from the RoK to Da Nang, but inveterate departure delays have caused huge inconvenience to airlines and travellers.

In response, the MOLIT Air Traffic Management Office switched its air traffic flow management technique from ‘Time Based Separation' between aircrafts to 'Calculated Take Off Time (CTOT)', which is departure time arrangement based on the arrival time of destined airport, and had successfully completed the pilot operation of the flow management from May to July, and then officially started operating from August 15 through verification by experts.

The average ground delay of aircrafts bound for Da Nang is expected to reduce by more than 70% from 273 minutes (11 minutes per aircraft) to 78 minutes (3 minutes per aircraft) by informing airlines of departure times adjusted in advance in consideration of landing availability at the arrival airport.

Accordingly, the reduction in fuel consumption during ground waiting is estimated to have an economic effect of saving 145 million KRW (108,000 USD) per year, and travelers' in-flight waiting time due to unnecessary ground waiting after boarding the aircraft has also been significantly reduced./. VNA