Saturday, May 26, 2018

3 flights nearly end up on same runway at Mumbai airport

Manju.V@timesgroup.com

Mumbai 26.05.2018


: An Air India aircraft less than two minutes to touchdown at Mumbai airport was told by air traffic control to pull up and go around after the controller noticed an IndiGo aircraft on the ground, waiting to depart, had begun moving to enter the active runway. The Tuesday night runway incursion incident is being investigated by the Indian civil aviation regulator.

The incident occurred at around 9.45 pm, during the evening peak hour at the congested Mumbai airport which handles about 950 takeoffs and landings in 24 hours, all on a single operational runway. Since May 17, a navigation aid called the Instrument Landing System (ILS), which eases the workload of air traffic controllers and pilots during landing, has been switched off and so air traffic congestion was high.

At 9.42 pm, an Alliance Air ATR aircraft operating Flight 91651to Bhavnagar was holding on taxiway N3, while an IndiGo A320 operating Flight 6E 5153 to Kolkata was holding on taxiway N1. Both aircraft were holding short of runway 27 and both pilots were awaiting ATC instructions to enter runway 27 to take off. At the same time, an Air India A321 aircraft flying in from Ahmedabad was on final approach to land on runway 27.

The ATC asked the Alliance Air commander to enter runway 27, line up and wait. Pilots read back the instructions given to them by air traffic control. “But both the pilots read back the instructions, one after another,’’ said a source. Seconds later, the tower controller saw both aircraft moving to enter the runway. “When Alliance Air was passing 800 feet, the Air India aircraft was at 1,400 feet about 5 km behind. The Air India aircraft then turned left, as instructed by the controller. A minimum vertical separation of about 1,000 feet and horizontal separation of about 5.5 km are required to be maintained between two aircraft,’’ said the source.

R K Saxena, general manager (air traffic management), Mumbai airport, denied that there was a breach of minimum separation between the Alliance Air and Air India aircraft at any point An IndiGo spokesperson said: “The Indi-Go flight was advised to enter runway 27 for departure. While entering the runway, the IndiGo pilot saw another aircraft lining up on runway 27. Our pilot stopped the aircraft at the holding position.’’


NARROW ESCAPE: Air planes of Air India, IndiGo & Alliance Air were involved in the fiasco

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