Published On : Fri, Apr 7th, 2017

Near collision averted between Air India and Indigo planes at IGI airport

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Air india and Indigo
New Delhi:
The capital’s busy IGI Airport saw an aircraft rejecting take off at high speed on Friday morning as another plane was landing on a merging runway at the same time. Parallel operations are not allowed on merging runways due to safety fears. If the incoming plane has to reject landing for some reason and takes off again, it can collide or get dangerously close to the other plane which has taken off in the same direction from the other runway.

This close shave happened when Air India’s AI 156 with over 120 people on board was rolling at a high speed to take off for Goa from IGIA’s main runway 28 at about 11.30 am. “The air traffic control (ATC) asked the commander of AI flight, Captain Amit Tyagi, to reject take off immediately as another planes was landing on runway 27. These two runways are not parallel and taper in the direction where the AI flight was to take off and from where the other plane was coming in to land,” said a source.

Captain Tyagi very skilfully managed to reject take off while the plane was at that time rolling at almost 100 knots or 185 kmph. The AI aircraft, an Airbus A-320, had to return to the terminal for checks on the brake assembly and tyres as is mandatory after high speed rejects. The AI engineering was surprised to see that despite the high speed reject in this hot weather, the plane tyres did not burst or deflate and commended the skills of the pilots in doing this job.

ATC comments were sought on this issue, but they were yet to respond by the time of filing the story.

IGIA’s runway 27 and 28 cannot be used simultaneously as the two merge towards Dwarka side. The ATC wants this runway to be straightened and made parallel to the other two runways 28 and 29. However, this work may happen at the fag end of IGIA’s overall development plan as Delhi International Airport Pvt Ltd (DIAL) is first going to lay down the fourth runway which will be parallel to runways 28 and 29.

Irrespective of the direction in which planes are landing and taking off, something determined by wind flow, parallel operations cannot happen from runway 28 and 27.