One of Europe’s most difficult airports will be easier to reach this winter – for some passengers, at least.

Thomas Cook Airlines will deploy a new aviation navigation system on flights to Innsbruck, which it hopes will dramatically reduce the amount of weather-related disruption.

The Austrian airport is in a narrow, curved Alpine valley, which does not allow the use of standard instrument landing system approaches. It is designated “Category C”, which means it requires special training; only pilots who have previously observed a landing from the jumpseat are allowed to land.

Its tricky location is also Innsbruck’s main selling point. The airport offers quick and easy access to some of the best skiing in the Alps, and is just two miles from the city centre, with a cheap, 15-minute local bus connection.

But Innsbruck-bound flights are frequently diverted to Munich or Verona airport because of cloud cover. If the cloud ceiling is below 850 feet, pilots cannot currently land. Some departures are held at UK airports in the hope that the weather will improve, itself a frustrating experience for passengers.

Now, though, ground-breaking technology is to be used to improve the odds of landing. Thomas Cook Airlines has won approval for a GPS-based system that allows its planes to fly curved approaches automatically, enabling landings to be made even when the cloud ceiling is as low as 350 feet. The sophisticated equipment has been fitted to the carrier’s Airbus A321 aircraft.

The procedure is known as RNP-AR, short for “Required Navigation Performance - Authorisation Required”, and was developed for airports that require a very high level of navigational accuracy.

Andy Thorington, group airlines head of Airbus operations for Thomas Cook and a pilot himself, said: “On a nice weather day, Innsbruck is my favourite airport. But in winter there are challenges.

“We are pretty confident that we will be able to avoid at least 90 per cent, if not all, of our diversions. Typically the cloud base that causes problems is around 500 feet. We can now get in below that.”

Captain Thorington said that the new procedure should also make the landing smoother: “Hopefully the passengers will be completely unimpressed because it’s a really comfortable way to land.

“The system improves safety, it improves commercial efficiency and it also has a positive environmental impact as it improves fuel efficiency and reduces emissions.”

The technology has implications for improving access to a wide range of other airports, such as the Greek islands of Mykonos, Corfu and Santorini.