The new In­stru­ment Land­ing Sys­tem (ILS) has marked a new era for avi­a­tion in To­ba­go, ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Jack Warn­er dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day of the ILS at Crown Point In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.Warn­er said the Crown Point run­way was once known as the "duck and land" land­ing spot and the new equip­ment would ben­e­fit To­ba­go."This morn­ing marks the end of the dark ages where in­dus­tri­al safe­ty is con­cerned and the be­gin­ning of mod­ern times.

Nev­er again will we hear where is the air­field, when they re­fer to the 'duck and land' land­ing spot. We now have the prop­er equip­ment," he said.Sec­re­tary for Tourism and Trans­porta­tion, Os­wald Williams, said the up­grad­ing of the Crown Point In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port was very im­por­tant to To­ba­go."The ad­di­tion of the land­ing in­stru­ment is a very crit­i­cal step to­wards mod­ernising the Crown Point In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. With this in­stru­ment, pi­lots can now ap­proach with greater con­fi­dence," he said.Williams stressed that the risk fac­tor was sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced and the pre­dictabil­i­ty was en­hanced. (CTF)

About the sys­tem

An in­stru­ment land­ing sys­tem (ILS) is a ground-based in­stru­ment ap­proach sys­tem that pro­vides pre­ci­sion guid­ance to an air­craft ap­proach­ing and land­ing on a run­way, us­ing a com­bi­na­tion of ra­dio sig­nals and, in many cas­es, high-in­ten­si­ty light­ing ar­rays to en­able a safe land­ing dur­ing in­stru­ment me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions such as low ceil­ings or re­duced vis­i­bil­i­ty, due to fog, rain, or blow­ing snow.

In­stru­ment ap­proach pro­ce­dure charts (or ap­proach plates) are pub­lished for each ILS ap­proach, pro­vid­ing pi­lots with the need­ed in­for­ma­tion to fly an ILS ap­proach dur­ing in­stru­ment flight rules (IFR) op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing the ra­dio fre­quen­cies used by the ILS com­po­nents or navaids and the min­i­mum vis­i­bil­i­ty re­quire­ments pre­scribed for the spe­cif­ic ap­proach.