To meet the demands of a growing air traffic over the Indian sky, a high-level committee has recommended a common use of the airspace by military and civilian aircraft and an enhanced flexibility in its usage.
"As a first step, the airspace above 29,000 feet could be released for civil traffic in the presently defined restricted/danger airspace. (However) the defence requirements would have a priority of not only increasing their height requirements but also expanding the restricted airspace, whenever required," the Committee headed by former Civil Aviation Secretary Ajay Prasad said in a report.
The report was submitted to Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel in New Delhi on Tuesday. The committee was set up in March last year to formulate a Master Plan for next-generation futuristic Air Navigation Services.
The panel said both defence and civil aviation ministries had accepted flexible use of airspace as the underlying basis for optimising the use of Indian airspace for meeting both military and civil aviation needs of the country.
The report comes in the backdrop of several incidents of 'near-miss' (which does not construe an accidental situation) in the past few months with the substantial growth in traffic.
In order to provide more space to civilian air traffic, the committee felt that the IAF should review the Restricted and Danger Areas expeditiously.
While recommending a series of measures to strengthen the air traffic control system, it said that an ATC delay of more than five minutes should be