Inverness Airport’s £1.3 million Instrument Landing System should be operational in July following the granting of a closure order for the Mid Coull road.

The Scottish Executive has now given permission for the C-listed road to be closed after assessing the outstanding objection to the closure application.

The road is expected to be closed within the next week (8 June), allowing training and procedural issues for the commissioning of the ILS to be finalised by HIAL. The target date for the precision navigational aid becoming active is early July.

ILS allows aircraft to follow a beam aligned with the runway on their approach for landing and enables them to descend to a lower height before making the decision to land or not.

The ILS at Inverness will reduce the number of flights cancelled or diverted due to poor weather and offer greater flight reliability to passengers and airlines using the airport. The road closure was necessary to allow the ILS to operate as cars passing on the road can interfere with the signal it sends to aircraft.

Once active, the ILS will also enable a further 150 metres of runway to be used at Inverness, extending the current usable runway length from 1,660 metres to almost 1,820 metres.

Paul Clarkson, HIAL’s General Manager Operations, said: "We are delighted that we can now bring the ILS into operation as it offers significant benefits to our airline customers and passengers travelling via the airport. Once the road is closed we can finalise training and procedural matters with the regulatory authorities and are confident that the system can be operational in early July.

"We recently brought an ILS on stream at Kirkwall and it has already allowed flights to land safely in poor weather that would previously have been diverted. The Inverness system will bring similar benefits to the airport and improve flight reliability."

During the year ending 31 March 2004, Inverness Airport handled 484,000 passengers and 32,500 individual aircraft movements. Year on year passenger growth at the airport is currently exceeding 20%.

ENDS