Thursday mishap could have been worse, outgoing flight was over permitted speed

A day after the narrow miss at the Mumbai airport, when a Riyadh-bound Jet Airways flight was asked to abort take-off after another flight scheduled to land on the runway did a go-around (an aborted landing followed by a take-off), a preliminary probe into the incident has found that the speed at which the Riyadh-bound flight was asked to abort take-off was higher than the permissible limit, which itself could have resulted in an accident.

A day after the narrow miss at the Mumbai airport, when a Riyadh-bound Jet Airways flight was asked to abort take-off after another flight scheduled to land on the runway did a go-around (an aborted landing followed by a take-off), a preliminary probe into the incident has found that the speed at which the Riyadh-bound flight was asked to abort take-off was higher than the permissible limit, which itself could have resulted in an accident.

HT Image

According to sources in the DGCA, the flight carrying more than 100 passengers was asked to cancel take-off at a high speed of 151 km per hour while the permissible speed is 140-km/per hour. “Stopping the aircraft at such a high speed could result in brake failure as the amount of heat released in such a situation is extremely high,” said a DGCA source.

Soon after vacating the runway, the aircraft got stuck on a taxiway owing to brake failure. “What if the brakes failed while the aircraft was still on the runway? It could have been dangerous because another Jet Airways from Delhi made a go-around on the same runway,” added the source.

There is also confusion over why the incoming Jet Airways flight from Delhi decided to go-around. On Thursday, the Air Traffic Control said the pilot of the incoming Jet Airways flight from Delhi had decided to go-around foreseeing an unstable landing, while the airline claimed that the landing was aborted on the ATC’s instruction.

An ATC official in conversation with pilots during the incident was taken off the roster pending an inquiry. The DGCA on Friday asked Jet Airways to download the digital flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder to get clarity on the conversation between the ATC and the pilots. “The transcripts would bring clarity on the mix up,” added the DGCA sources.