Flight mystery yet to be cracked

Kolkata: Mystery still shrouds the temporary disappearance of a Singapore Airline (SA) flight that went missing for 35 minutes after Kolkata air traffic control jurisdiction early on Monday.
While officials of the Airports Authority of India and Directorate General of Civil Aviation claimed it to be a fault with aircraft transponder, SA said that a post-flight check-up revealed there were no defect with the transponder.
"Checks were carried out on the aircraft as part of our pre-departure routine before and after the flight and no defects were found," said an airline spokesperson on Tuesday. However, Airports Authority of India officials stuck to their claim that the problem was with the transponder of the aircraft.
SQ377, flying from Milan to Singapore, entered the Kolkata air traffic jurisdiction at 1.05 am on Monday somewhere around 100 nautical miles southwest of Jamshedpur. For the next 35 minutes, the flight remained untraceable on the Monopulse Secondary Radar (MSSR) before it blinked when the aircraft crossed almost 160 nautical miles east of Bhubaneswar and was over the Bay of Bengal.
"The commander of the aircraft was informed by Kolkata air traffic controllers that they had lost radar contact with our aircraft. Crew and Kolkata ATC maintained voice contact through the duration in which radar signals were not there," the SA spokesperson added.
DGCA officials said neither ATC nor the airline had reported the incident to them.
According to aviation experts, it is difficult to state wether the problem was with the aircraft transponder or the radar. There were 10 other aircraft over the region at that time. All were visible. On the other hand, the particular aircraft was very much visible on the MSSR of other airports it overflew. Only detailed investigation can reveal the exact cause of the incident.
15/07/09 Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jul 2009, Foreign Jul 2009, Safety Jul 2009