Close shave for flights

Calcutta: Two aircraft, one of which could not be tracked, came on a collision course on Thursday morning but an on-flight warning system steered the pilots to safety.
The Airports Authority of India has ordered an inquiry. “The reason why the flights came so close to each other would be known after the probe,” said Gautam Mukherjee, the AAI regional executive director (eastern India).
A Jet Airways flight from Delhi to Singapore and an IndiGo flight from Bhubaneswar to Delhi came within a few minutes of crashing into each other over Otaba, near Raipur, around 260km from Calcutta.
The region falls in the “area south” zone of the Calcutta air traffic control. “The ATC was unaware of the Jet Airways flight as it was not blinking on the radar. Nor was there any contact between the pilot and the ATC through voice communication,” said an ATC official.
The Jet Airways flight, travelling from northwest to southeast, was at an altitude of 35,000ft. The IndiGo aircraft, from southeast to northwest, was at 34,000ft. Sources said the ATC, in the dark about the Singapore-bound flight, asked the IndiGo pilot to climb to 36,000ft.
25/02/11 Telegraph

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Categories: Airports Feb 2011, Indigo Airlines Feb 2011, Jet Airways Feb 2011, Safety Feb 2011