Air India,Jet planes avert collision

A collision between two departing aircraft,which carried 239 passengers between them,was narrowly averted on Sunday morning at Mumbais Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. The incident on the runway occurred just a day after the Directorate General of Civil Aviation passed instructions allowing round-the-clock usage of the cross runways that were earlier being used for only six hours a day. Aviation experts say the near-collision puts a serious question mark on safety assessment at the airport.

The incident occurred around 8 am,when Air India flight AI-348 was preparing to take off from the main runway,even as Jet Airways flight 9W-615 was readying for the same from the airports secondary runway. The planes came within seconds of a possible collision because the airports runways intersect one another and,according to sources,either a take-off clearance was given to both planes simultaneously or one of the pilots misunderstood the Air Traffic Controls ATC instructions.

The Jet flight was bound for Kolkata with 119 passengers onboard,while the Air India plane,with 120 passengers,was headed for Shanghai via Delhi.

While ATC officials,on condition of anonymity,stated that they clearly did not issue any take-off instructions to the A-I pilot and that his human error was responsible for the near crash,officials from A-I said the pilot was given instructions to proceed. The procedure is that once a take-off instruction is given by a controller,the pilot repeats the same as acknowledgement. In this case,the pilot said he had acknowledged the controller and then increased the flight speed, said an A-I pilot who spoke to the captain of AI-348 after this mornings incident.

Sources also said that after the perceived take-off instructions were given to both the flights,a controller who saw both the aircraft increase their speed immediately shouted at the A-I pilot to abort take-off within 10 seconds,after which even the Jet Airways pilot aborted the take-off.