After being slowed down for almost a year due to lockdowns and fears about traveling during the pandemic, the Middle East's aviation sector is ready take off again. In addition to tech being deployed for ensuring contactless service and monitoring infections, smart tools like facial recognition as well as scanners are also being used to speed up check-ins.

Dubai-based carrier Emirates, which started off by testing IATA's health pass, has now tied up with the city's health authorities to verify PCR results, so that passengers can board flight quickly. In its own bid to increase speed and efficiency, the administration at Dubai's airport has also introduced a method by which the time taken between a flight taking off and another landing can be reduced.

To cut down the delay between incoming and outgoing airplanes, for increasing the number of departures in an hour, the authorities will now manage the impact of wake turbulence.

This term indicates the wave consisting of quickly rotating vortices in the air, left behind by propellers when a flight is thrust upwards during takeoff. The aircraft that's supposed to land on the runway or take off next, is affected by this wake turbulence.

In order to deal with this situation, airport operators need to ensure a time-gap between flights, and this naturally has an impact on the number of airplanes taking off and coming in.

The weight, speed and wingspan of an aircraft determines the strength of the wave left behind by it, and also decides how the plane behind will tackle it. Hence these factors are used for dividing airplanes into categories, to schedule flights in a way that impact of wake turbulence is reduced.

For this purpose, Dubai Airport has adopted a RECAT-enhanced Wake Turbulence Separation system, which represents creation of more categories to manage the time-gap effectively. Thanks to this move, the delay between carriers will be cut down, and more flights can land and leave the runway in one hour.