Mystery aircraft gives jitters to airliners near Mumbai India’s dangerous western neighbourhood, which is kept under aerial surveillance by military planes of global superpowers, gave the jitters to some international commercial flights flying over the Arabian Sea about 450 to 480km off Mumbai’s coastline on Saturday morning. An Etihad aircraft winging its way from Abu Dhabi to the far east had its traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) alarm going off loudly in the cockpit at 6.54am (IST) — indicating that another aircraft had got dangerously close to it by breaching the minimum 1,000 feet of vertical separation that has to be maintained for safety. Some other international airlines flying near Mumbai on Friday morning also reportedly had their TCAS buzzing. The warning came when the aircraft — not originating from or headed for Mumbai — were on aerial route P-574 between reporting points Bodik and Adpap over the Arabian Sea and flying at 36,500 feet, say sources. “The indication Etihad aircraft got was of an unidentified plane flying just 500 feet below it. It reported this to the Mumbai ATC which had no such plane on its radar,” said a senior official. An Etihad plane and several other airliners had their collision alarms ringing on Saturday morning, but fortunately for them the breach of vertical separation (500 feet) was not serious enough to trigger their “resolutionary advisory“. This would have generated an automatic message for pilots to immediately change course to avoid collision. The directorate general of civil aviation, is now investigating this blind case as the credentials of the unidentified plane are unlikely to be ever known. “Military and government planes on sensitive or classified missions do not file their flight plans with the ATCs. Such planes fly with `due regard to civil air traffic using visual flight rules.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 04:44:15 +0000
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