DGCA: 18 air misses since January 2007

New Delhi: An indication of how safe the India skies are can be ascertained by the fact that in 10 months since January 2007, there have been 18 air misses involving all the major commercial air lines in the country according to Director General of Civil Aviation.
This was obtained by this correspondent in response to an application under the Right to Information Act from the DGCA. According to information obtained 13 air miss incidents have occurred at the airport terminal areas of Mumbai and Delhi.
An air miss occurs when two aircraft come too close, closer than the standard separation that they need to maintain which is 1000 feet to 2000 feet vertical separation and 10 miles to 6 miles lateral separation.
The first incident occurred on January 4, 2007 involving a Jet Airways aircraft and two Indian Airforce fighter aircraft which occurred at 102 nautical miles near the Mumbai airport.
The aircraft were just three nautical miles away from each other which is too close considering that the average speed of aircraft is 800 kilometres which gives pilots just a couple of seconds to react in case of an emergency.
The second incident was in Chennai on January 18 involving an Indigo airlines and Go Air over Bangalore airport.
The last incident which occurred in October 17, occurred also in Mumbai where an Indonesian Airlines and Luxemberg Airline had an air miss due to coordination failure.
Information of air misses was obtained till October 2007. The airlines involved in the various air misses are Jet Airways, Indigo Airlines, Go Air, Indian Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Kingfisher Airlines, Air Deccan, Malaysia Airlines, Blue Dart Airlines, Indian Air Force, Singapore Airlines, Alliance Air, Condore and Air Sahara (Jet Lite), Jindal Steel, Indian, Virgin Atlantic, Thai Airlines, Indonesian Airline and Luxemborg Airlines.
The airlines involved in the maximum number of incidents were Kingfisher Airlines with five aircraft and Indian Airlines with four aircraft involved in incidents of air miss.
25/11/07 Sonal Kellogg/The Asian Age

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Safety Nov 2007