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New alert criteria of the Airport Thunderstorm and Lightning Alerting System (ATLAS)

Starting from February 2014, criteria of ATLAS Amber alert based on lightning detection had been extended from 5km to 10km of the airport. The modification was introduced after consulting users and aims at better protection for aircraft maintenance staff that related work should stop when there is lightning activity within 10km of the airport.

The latest alerting criteria of ATLAS is summarized below:


Figure 1  Alerting zones of ATLAS: The black circles respectively represent 5 km and 10 km radius from the airport reference point; the red area encloses the warning area for the passenger terminal and cargo terminal (Zone A) with a 1 km buffer; while the blue area outlines the area 1 km from the boundary of the airport island (Zone B by excluding Zone A)