Reports of near-misses in Delhi untrue: Airport authority

New Delhi: Slamming recent media reports of alleged lapses committed by the air traffic control (ATC) at the international airport here, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) Friday said aviation operations in the national capital were the safest in the world.
The reaction by AAI came after reports that the Delhi ATC had given permission to a Jet Airways flight from Mumbai to land even though an aircraft was present on the same runway it was supposed to land on.
'It was far away and had not received permission to land as we knew there was another plane on the runway. We are not blind or out of our mind to give this sort of permission,' a senior ATC official told IANS.
According to senior AAI officials, the two incidents on Wednesday and Thursday were caused by strong winds which prevented the landing of Jet Airways flight 9W309 from Mumbai and the Emirates flight EK516 from Dubai.
'If there is strong wind on the runway, we deny the approaching aircraft permission to land as it would cause major technical problems. This is all procedure which ensures safety, I do not understand why media is saying that by denying them landing we jeopardised the passengers safety,' V. Somasundaram, board member of the air navigation service (ANS) told IANS.
The senior ATC official said that all such reports were part of a malicious campaign run by private airlines.
20/05/11 IANS/Sify.com

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Categories: Airports May 2011, Foreign May 2011, Jet Airways May 2011, Safety May 2011