In a fateful save in the nick of time, a mid-air collision between two IndiGo aircrafts, was averted over the Bengaluru airspace on Tuesday, 10 July.
The Indigo planes were just a mere few seconds away from a mid-air collision. Fortunately, all the passengers onboard both the Indigo flights were de-boarded safely.
Commenting on the near fatal crash, the Indigo company reported: “The TCAS-Resolution Advisory system was triggered on two of our aircrafts operating Coimbatore-Hyderabad and Bangalore-Cochin routes respectively, on 10 July. Following normal procedure this has been reported to the regulator.”
The Air Traffic Control (ATC) had asked the flight from Coimbatore to climb 36,000 feet, while the flight from Bengaluru was directed to climb to 28,000 feet. The planes came face-to-face when 6E 779 was at 27,300 feet and 6E 6505 was at 27,500 feet, leaving the two aircraft at hardly four miles from each other and vertically separating them at just 200 feet.
On June 28, four passengers including the pilots died after the plane crashed in Ghatkopar, Mumbai.
A similar disaster averted when an IndiGo plane came precariously close to an Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft in Chennai airspace. The passenger jet then steered away to safety following an auto-generated warning in May this year.
The two aircraft were just “300 ft” away from each other at the time of the incident on May 21 which set off a Resolution advisory (RA) for the IndiGo pilot to steer the aircraft to a safer distance, reports said.
RA is an auto-generated warning in the cockpit for the pilot to manoeuvre the aircraft and avoid collision.
“IndiGo aircraft VT-ITW operating on the Visakhapatnam-Bengaluru route and an Indian Air Force jet were on a collision course as the two aircraft were at a distance of just 300 ft from each other. The planes were at an altitude of 24,000 ft in Chennai airspace. IndiGo Airbus A320 flight was on the climb,” sources said.