Mid-air scare: 2 IndiGo flights avert collision over Bengaluru airport. 10 points
Premium- - Officials of the DGCA said the two IndiGo planes were involved in 'breach of separation' at Bengaluru airport
A mid-air collision involving two IndiGo domestic passenger flights that took off from the Kempegowda International Aircraft (KIA) was averted after a radar controller closely monitored the airspace and took corrective actions.
The Indigo flights of Airbus A320 had hundreds of passengers on board.
Here are the 10-point developments to this story:
- Two IndiGo flights – 6E 455 going from Bengaluru to Kolkata, and 6E 246 going from Bengaluru to Bhubaneswar – averted a major collision over the Bengaluru airport just after their take-off.
- The issue of Indigo's two domestic flights narrowly escaping mid-air collision will be investigated by the aviation watchdog Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
- The incident happened on the morning of 9 January when the aircrafts departed from the Bengaluru airport within a span of approximately 5 minutes..
- Officials of the DGCA said that the two IndiGo planes were involved in 'breach of separation' at Bengaluru airport.
- However, the "breach of separation" was not logged in any logbook and it was not reported by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) either.
- "Both runways were in use, the official on shift decided for single Runway operations i.e. North Runway for arrival and departure, South Runway will be closed but it was not communicated to South tower controller. South tower controller gave departure to 6E 455 Kolkata bound aircraft and at the same time North tower controller gave departure to 6E 246 Bhubaneswar bound aircraft without coordination," a DGCA said.
- A prima facie report stated that "the incident occurred due to a lack of communication between radar controllers and ATC officers at the time of the incident.
- Meanwhile, DGCA chief Arun Kumar told news agency PTI that the regulator is investigating the incident "and shall take strictest action against those found delinquent".
- Breach of separation happens when two aircraft cross the minimum mandatory vertical or horizontal distance in an airspace.
- "Both aircraft after departure were on converging heading i.e. moving towards each other. Approach radar controller gave diverging heading and avoided mid-air collision," an official said.
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