Second big casualty has been averted in last ten days at Mumbai airport. On Thursday night, the Kingfisher plane was about to land when the Spice jet plane had been trapped on the runway. The spice jet plane, having 109 passengers was about to take off, going from Mumbai to Chennai, when it got technical fault. The kingfisher plane- IT 318 having 147 passengers that came from Delhi was also ready to land there. Just at the 11th hour, air traffic control understood the whole situation and ordered the Kingfisher’s pilot to remain in the air until the runway was cleared. In this way the casualty was avoided. There were 270 passengers in total in the two planes. DGCA has started probing the case.
The same type of case was noticed a week before this Thursday when the plane casualty had been prevented at Mumbai airport. On the night of 26th-27th May, a Jet airways plane was not allowed to land there at the nick of the time, as Indigo plane had already entered on the runway. ATC had seen the Indigo plane and the casualty was ward off. Before that on 20th April, the Kingfisher’s, Bhavnagar flight was to be stopped just in-between the take-off, because the Go air’s flight hadn’t emptied the runway. Last year in the month of October, the Kingfisher’s flight was stopped to take-off as the Air India flight had landed at the same runway at the same time. In experts’ opinion, Surface Movement Radar can solve this problem, and coordination between ground and air traffic can be maintained. DGCA has also advocated it in its report. Sources said Air Port Authority of India had purchased this Radar but was not installed. The place is being searched to install it. This type of Radar is used only in Delhi in India. The necessity of this Radar is also felt in Mumbai because planes do take-off and land at the same time on the intersect runway. Apart from it, many posts of traffic managers are lying vacant.