ATCs in a blame game over air miss

Kochi: About 300 passengers on board two aircraft escaped by the skin of their teeth last week when a Bahrain-bound Gulf Air flight and a Kozhikode-bound Air India flight missed a sure mid-air collision by just 10 seconds over the Kozhikode skies.
And as it turns out the investigating agencies are yet to pinpoint those responsible for it even a week after the incident, with the air traffic control towers in Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode and Mangalore indulging in a full-fledged blame game. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in the Indian skies that there is even an attempt to brush the incident aside saying “it actually happened over no-man’s land”.
Top sources told this website's newspaper that the Gulf Air flight took off from Cochin International Airport and flew left over Kozhikode to enter the M300 route to the Gulf sector. It was climbing to its cruising altitude and was at 15,700 feet when the Air India flight was descending on the M300 from 16,000 feet to landing altitude. “There was hardly 400 feet between the two aircraft. Considering their speeds it wouldn’t have taken more than five to 10 seconds for them to fly into each other,” top aviation sources told this website's newspaper.
18/04/08 Manoj K Das/Newindpress

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Categories: Air India - International Apr 2008, Airports Apr 2008, Foreign Apr 2008, NACIL Apr 2008, Safety Apr 2008