Why Malaysia Disapproved the Use of ILS in Seletar Airport?

11 Apr 2019
http://tinyurl.com/y2yhlkc8 
# Seletar Airport,  Firefly,  Malaysia,  Singapore,  ILS, GPS ,  landing system

Both the Malaysian and Singapore Governments have reached a tentative agreement to continue and allow Seletar Airport to be used for the FireFly air service from Malaysia .    The solution is for Singapore to remove  the aircraft landing procedure using Instrument Landing System (ILS) and revert back to the manual landing system.   But Why?

What is ILS?

ILS is a instrument landing system used by many airports all over the World to guide the airplane landings.  Without it,  the pilots will have to rely on their visions which means they cannot land in bad weather if the visibility is poor. 

Malaysia used the reason that ILS will restrict the building height allowed in its  Pasir Gudang area but Singapore repeatedly said the use of ILS would not change the existing height limits of the building in the flight path. 

Going Back to Manual System?

It was a surprise for Malaysia to disallow the use of ILS in Seletar Airport because ILS is more superior and safer system to use than the manual system.

There were some arguments between Malaysia and Singapore over the use of ILS system  over facebook and the presses

At the end,  the matter was discussed and put in place between the countries on 5 Apr 2019 with Singapore agreeing to withdraw the use of ILSin the landing procedure  while Malaysia agreeing to remove the flight restriction over Pasir Gudang indefinitely.  Meanwhile,  both parties agreed to set up a High Level Committee  to review the existing flight path agreement made in 1974.  They also agreed to jointly develop a GPS landing system that will be acceptable to both countries.

Why GPS Landing is Allowed?

It is understood that ILS is a well established but old and reliable analogue system developed just after World War 2.    GPS,   on the other hand is a relatively new system.  According to this article,  this GPS system allows aircraft with instrument approaches down to 60 metres (200 ft)@  800 metres (0.5 miles) away from the runway .   

If that is true,  the use of the GPS will allow higher buildings to be constructed at the Pasir Gudang end.  

Whether the GPS will be used in future will depend much on whether both countries would agree to work out a solution.  Joint development of a GPS landing system is a good start although the Malaysia would want to see this  kind of landing approach if this is technically feasible.