Air tragedy averted in Mumbai

The GoAir aircraft,coming from Delhi,was approaching for landing at Mumbai’s CST International Airport minutes ahead of Kingfisher’s turbo-prop plane ATR 72-500 being cleared for take off at 1336 hours,a Kingfisher spokesperson said.

As soon as Kingisher’s Mumbai-Bhavnagar flight IT-4123 started rolling to the active runway,the air traffic control asked it to abort take-off. The ATR plane,which was on its initial roll,immediately aborted the take off and returned to the bay.

With reports that the air traffic control had also given clearance to the GoAir flight to land almost at the same time,sources said the flight data recorders of both aircraft that records the pilot-ATC conversation would be sealed for DGCA investigations.

The sources said reports about a second Kingfisher plane,IT-308,from Delhi being cleared to land at Mumbai around the same time were not correct as it was almost eight nautical miles away from the airport when this incident had occurred.

They also said IT-308,being operated by an Airbus A-320 family aircraft,made a normal landing and did not make a ‘go around’ or taking an extra round before coming in to land.