IA flight gets a scare while landing

New Delhi: Passengers on board the Indian Airlines Lucknow-Delhi flight IC-812 had a hair-raising experience as the aircraft was asked to go around at the last moment while landing at the Delhi airport on Tuesday evening.
The incident took place at 6.45 pm, when another aircraft was spotted on the same runway as the Indian Airlines flight was about to touch down.
Just seconds before the aircraft was set to land, senior training pilot Captain R S Sandhu spotted an aircraft on the runway. The flight was at a height of 200 feet at that time. Captain Sandhu informed the Air Traffic Control (ATC) and asked permission for a go-round, which was immediately granted.
Sandhu apologised to the passengers on board about the incident and the plane landed half-an-hour late.
It was later found that a private Beechcraft, with call sign VT CLE, had landed just minutes before the Indian Airlines flight was scheduled to land, and had not cleared the runway still.
The distance between two aircraft before landing has been changed to 3 nautical miles during clear visibility; earlier it was 5 nautical miles.
In case of low visibility, however, the distance between two aircraft is kept at between 8 and 10 nautical miles. The ATC had given a go-ahead to IC812 for landing as per the new standard. But the ATC, officials said, did not realise that the charted aircraft had not cleared the runway by that time.
Inside the aircraft, the passengers said they experience a sudden jerk as the manoeuvre requires the aircraft to suddenly go into a take-off mode when it is preparing to land.
17/12/08 Expressindia

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Categories: Air India Domestic Dec 2008, NACIL Dec 2008, Safety Dec 2008