Talks on with IAF on close shaves

Praful Patel today said his ministry was in talks for better coordination between civilian and IAF air controls, the announcement coming after this week’s near-misses involving the force’s chopper and planes.
The civil aviation ministry has started talks with the defence ministry, Patel said, a day after a Dibrugarh-Calcutta Air India flight came within two-and-a-half seconds of colliding with an IL-76. On Monday, an IAF chopper had landed 30 metres from an Air India Airbus about to take off in Mumbai.
“The DGCA has started an inquiry. We need better co-ordination between civilian and IAF ATCs. We are talking to the ministry of defence,” Patel said from Delhi.
The IAF today denied its aircraft was involved in yesterday’s near-miss in Assam. “The IL-76 belonged to the Aviation Research Centre and the IAF has nothing to do with it,” said an official of the Eastern Air Command in Shillong. No probe has been ordered since the plane doesn’t belong to the IAF, he added.
DGCA officials in Calcutta said the IL-76 had been in touch with the Jorhat ATC, under the IAF, not the one in Dibrugarh.
“The GM of flight information in Guwahati has sent a report saying the IL-76 was co-ordinating with the Jorhat ATC, not Dibrugarh,” said H.N. Mishra, the DGCA’s air safety officer for the eastern region, in Calcutta. But wing commander Mahesh Upasani, the Eastern Air Command’s PRO in Delhi, said the IL-76 was being guided by the civilian ATC in Dibrugarh all along.
12/02/09 The Telegraph

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Categories: Air India Domestic Feb 2009, NACIL Feb 2009, Safety Feb 2009