Fliers survive mid-air scare at IGI

New Delhi: The aviation ministry’s delay in earmarking separate runways for take-off and landing at IGI are bringing fliers closer to a disaster.
The most recent close call was on Friday when two aircraft narrowly missed colliding into each other - they were both cleared for take-off almost simultaneously even though there has to be a gap of three minutes between each departing plane.
Since the planes were to take off towards Dwarka - where the runways almost merge - the aircraft could have been involved in a mid-air collision.
The lives of hundreds of passengers were saved as the air traffic control realised its mistake in time and asked one of the taxiing planes to stop before it could get airborne.
The incident happened around 11.30 am when an Uzbekistan Airways plane was just lifting off from the main runway of the airport and a SpiceJet aircraft (SG 253 to Goa with 200 passengers on board) was cleared to begin taxiing for take off on the secondary one.
‘‘An aircraft reaches take-off speed in 37 to 42 seconds. In this case, the plane had initiated rolling and did that for seven seconds when the pilot was asked to abort take-off,’’ Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Kanu Gohain said. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation is now conducting an inquiry as the air traffic control, prima facie, was found to have committed a mistake.
24/11/07 Neha Lalchandani/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Nov 2007, Foreign Nov 2007, Safety Nov 2007, SpiceJet Nov 2007