NEW DELHI: A major disaster was averted at the Indira Gandhi International Airport recently when two Boeing aircraft almost collided. While one had around 360 passengers, the other was empty and parked. The incident took place on December 2, 2016.
Officials said an Emirates Airlines plane, which had just landed, was asked to park on a bay already occupied by a Turkish Airlines aircraft. As the airplane moved towards the assigned bay amid dense fog, the pilot suddenly saw an aircraft parked 15 metres away. He brought his plane to a halt with just a few metres to spare. Airport technology had wrongly shown that Turkish Airlines had vacated its stand at B15, and that its aircraft has already moved from its position at 6:57am.
The probe finds that Universal Flight Information System (UFIS), traffic and resource planning and management system, showed that stand B15 was vacated by the Turkish aircraft at 6.57am at the airport.
“Although Delhi airport has state-of-the-art technology, it has limitations during low visibility. If the flight was moving at the prescribed speed of 12 nautical miles on the ground, it could have led to a disaster. Luckily, it was going much slower,” a senior official claimed.
“Turkish Airlines didn’t vacate the stand and Emirates aircraft was not informed about it since the UFIS had told that Turkish aircraft had taken off,” a report said.