Third in a row, scare over Kolkata

New Delhi: For the third day in a row, Indian skies witnessed a scare over airplanes coming dangerously close to each other. The latest incident
— which thankfully turned out to be a false alarm — happened at 10.46am near Kolkata on Wednesday, when the collision signal went off as Jet Airways flight 9W843 was coming in from Chennai and a SpiceJet flight, SG529, had taken off for Bangalore.
Jet's Boeing 737-800 cut short its descent after the plane's traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) went off over Kakid, 280km from Kolkata. At the time, the SpiceJet plane had been asked to ascend to 32,000 feet while the Jet aircraft was instructed to descend from a higher level to 33,000 feet, according to the assigned route plan. Jet's alarm went off when it was at 34,500 feet and the aircraft stopped descending any further.The TCAS alarm goes off when planes breach the minimum distance of 1,000 feet they must maintain from each other in flight and signifies a near miss — something which happened between an Indian Airlines and a defence aircraft on Tuesday over Jorhat.
"There was no breach of vertical separation in this case. Maybe there was some other problem like a faster rate of descent but there was no violation of safety. Why this alarm went off will be probed," said DGCA chief Nasim Zaidi.
12/02/09 Saurabh Sinha & Neha Lalchandani/Times of India

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Categories: Jet Airways Feb 2009, Safety Feb 2009, SpiceJet Feb 2009