A day after the report of a joint investigation committee into the near miss between the Presidential chopper formation and a civilian flight at the Mumbai airport in February was released,the Air Force has said the main factor responsible for the incident was lack of coordination by civilian air traffic controllers. While the report has brought out five causes of the incident,including miscoordination between various agencies,problems at the ATC and lack of landing permission sought by the IAF pilots,the Air Force says the ATC was the single most contributing factor. The main contributing factor for the incident has been non-transfer of the arrival of the VIP formation by the approach (ATC) control until it reached a critical stage of flight, IAF spokesman Wing Commander T K Singha said. Explaining the incident,the officer said there was a lack of coordination between the two ATC controllers and both later admitted that they were not aware of the traffic being handled by each other. The approach controller delayed handling over of the formation to the aerodrome controller. A call was made by the helicopter saying that it was on finals,but it went unanswered by the ATC. There has been a clear lack of coordination between approach and control, the spokesperson said. Significantly,while the report blasts both the IAF and the civilian authorities for a lack of coordination that almost led to a disaster,most of the recommendations call for better standard operating procedures (SOP) by civilian authorities. The recommendations include delegation of senior officers from the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the Air Force for effective coordination of VIP flights,issuing of airport SOPs by AAI for VIP movements and defining the meaning of priority landings and take off.
