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Air Lanka may have been responsible for near-miss

D Jose in Thiruvananthapuram

As the Directorate General of Civil Aviation inquiry into the near miss involving a Sri Lankan and an Indonesian aircraft on February 20 gets underway, the Air Lanka appears to be in the wrong.

The inquiry was ordered after media reports about the averted mishap.

Sources said the Air Lanka pilot flouted the ATC direction to fly at 35,000 feet over Thiruvananthapuram. It was maintaining only 27,500 feet when it came nearly 400 feet close to the Garuda flight bound for Jakarta.

The time the Air Lanka flight, bound for London, took to reach Thiruvananthapurm is also puzzling. Though a jet aircraft needs only 18 to 30 minutes to reach Thiruvananthapuram airspace from Colombo, the Air Lanka flight took 42 minutes to cover the 192 nautical miles (357 km). Flight records in Colombo indicated that the flight took off at 0430 hours. The records at Thiruvananthapuram showed that it entered the ATC control area only at 0512 hours.

The time it took to reach 27,500 feet is also surprising. While the minimum climb rate for jet aircraft is 1200 feet per minute, it could not reach the permitted 35,000 feet even in 42 minutes.

Another problem before the probe team is how the Air Lanka and ATC personnel suppressed the matter. The authorities came to know about it only after a Sri Lankan paper published a report a fortnight after the incident.

The ATC controller on duty has been suspended. Thiruvananthapuram ATC chief C P Puroshothaman refused to comment since an inquiry was underway. "Let the probe team find the facts," he said.

Sources, for their part, said it could been a case of collusion between the pilots and the controller that saw the matter being kept under wraps. They might have thought it better not to report it since the mishap was averted.

The calamity was averted thanks to the traffic collusion avoidance system in the aircraft. Curiously, the distance measuring equipment, a vital equipment, has not been functional at the Thiruvananthapurm international airport for the past five months. Though the matter was reported, the communication wing has not taken any steps to service the equipment so far.

The high frequency radio telephone, the only means of communication over the high seas, is also in bad shape. The equipment is not at all dependable, ATC sources said. Unfortunately, the communication and the ATC wing, which have to co-ordinate for safe flying, have been at loggerheads for some time.

Sources blamed such incidents on the inefficiency of the ATC men. Prior to the Air Lanka-Garuda near miss, Alliance Air and Jet Air aircraft were involved in a similar one over Coimbatore, which is also under the Thiruvanathapuram ATC's control, sources revealed. There too, the traffic collision avoidance system had come to the rescue. The matter was promptly reported to the higher authorities and an inquiry conducted.

Interestingly, the Thiruvananthapuram airport has the most modern equipment among the airports in the country. It has a high frequency omni range radar and the advanced instrument landing system.

The ATC source denied the charges of inefficiency. "We have been utmost careful in handling flights, though we are working under a high level of stress," a source said, adding that the communication staff considered the ATC men their bitter enemies and always tried to run them down.

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