NEW DELHI: Nearly 170 passengers and 10 crewmembers of an Indian airlines flight had a close shave yesterday when a military chopper came in its path just as the passenger jet was about to takeoff.
A major accident was averted at the Mumbai airport yesterday when a helicopter of President Pratibha Patil landed on the runway just as a passenger jet was about to take off, media reports said.
The plane had already run for a kilometer and gained momentum when the pilot noticed that the helicopter was dangerously close and applied emergency brakes, the IANS news agency reported.
The helicopter that missed the runway collision was part of Patil’s entourage but the Indian leader was not on board, an official statement said. Patil is currently on a visit to the region.
Mumbai’s Air Traffic Control had given clearance to the flight and the helicopter at the same time and the domestic aviation authorities have ordered an inquiry into the incident, the reports said.
“The tire of the aircraft got damaged in the incident and the aircraft was then taken to a bay. Passengers have been flown to the national capital by another aircraft,” an airlines spokesman told the IANS.
The pilot of IC-866 Mumbai-New Delhi flight, Capt. A.S. Kohli, applied emergency brakes and aborted the takeoff. “I was just preparing to take off, suddenly this chopper came right in front of the aircraft and I applied the emergency brakes,” Kohli told reporters in Mumbai.
“From the information available with us, our pilot sighted the army chopper very close by, maybe a 100 feet or so in midair. So he applied the emergency brakes and aborted the takeoff. No miracles, it is the rigid professional training that was seen in action here,” Air India spokesman Jitendra Bhargava told IANS.
Bhargava declined to comment on the cause of the incident and termed it “purely Air Traffic Control-centric and not Air India-centric”.
“Now whatever has to be said and done will be at the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and Mumbai International Airport Ltd. (MIAL) levels,” he said.
Several passengers, shaken by the incident, decided to cancel their travel plans, while many others braved the agony and went to New Delhi by alternate flights arranged by the carrier.
