2 IndiGo planes took off at same time, were just 100 feet apart; ATCO suspended
One air traffic controller’s (ATCO) licence has been suspended after clearing the departure of an IndiGo flight at Bengaluru airport on January 7 without consulting the south tower or approach radar controller.
NEW DELHI: The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Monday suspended an air traffic controller’s (ATCO) licence for three months after two flights were allowed to take off simultaneously from two runways of Bengaluru airport and a collision was averted due to the intervention of the approach radar controller, people aware of the matter said.
The two flights had hundreds of passengers on board.
The incident, formally described as the breach of separation, took place on January 7 when the airport’s south tower controller cleared IndiGo flight 6E 455 (Bengaluru to Kolkata) for take-off in coordination with the approach radar controller. At the same time, the north tower controller also cleared IndiGo flight 6E 246 (Bengaluru to Bhubaneswar) without consulting the south tower or approach radar controller.
“As both aircraft after departure were moving towards each other, approach radar controller gave diverging heading to separate these aircraft…. At the closest point of conflict, the vertical and lateral separation between both aircraft was 100 feet (Standard 1000ft) and 0.9 NM (Standard 3NM),” a DGCA report into the “serious incident” said.
“ATCO licence of north tower controller who was also the watch supervisory officer (WSO) of the shift, was suspended for a period of three months as he failed to comply with the coordination procedures during change of runway operations from segregated mode to single mode of operations,” DGCA said.
The air traffic control’s shift supervisor has been given a formal warning “for not monitoring the activities of ATC Tower and non-reporting of incident”.
The incident has been classified as “serious incident” and was being investigated by Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB).