Mumbai, Feb 11: A midair collision was averted between an Air India aircraft and Vistara flight by a few seconds in the Mumbai airspace on Wednesday. After the incident, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has grounded two Vistara pilots.
The incident happened when Vistara’s A-320 Neo, flying from Delhi to Pune as UK 997 with 152 passengers, descended to an altitude of 27,000 feet, where an AI’s Airbus A-319 was flying from Mumbai to Bhopal as AI 631 in the opposite direction. As per Vistara, the air traffic control (ATC) had asked the pilots to be at 27,000 feet and they did not do so inadvertently. However, sources claim that it had been assigned a flight level of 29,000 feet.
At one point, UK 997 and AI 631 were 100 feet apart vertically. They were just seconds away from each other. However, the midair crash was averted well in time as the traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) alarms went off in the cockpits of both the planes.
The incident is now being probed by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB).
In recent times, this is the second such incident that has been reported in Maharashtra skies. Earlier on January 28, IndiGo A-320, flying from Hyderabad to Raipur, and the Emirates Boeing 777, on its way from Singapore to Dubai, breached the minimum distance over Nagpur.