Two air traffic controllers suspended

The national carrier,however,denied involvement of their aircraft in the incident and,in a statement,said “as per our preliminary inquiries,no such incident has been reported by the operating crew”.

The AAI,however,maintained there was “no serious collision risk” when the vertical separation between the Air India flight IC-941 from Hyderabad to Delhi and Kingfisher Airlines’ Delhi to Bhubaneshwar flight IT-3345 came down to 700 feet as against the required 1,000 feet. The two planes were on “different flight paths” — one was approaching for landing and the other for take off.

A conflict alert was generated at the ATC display when the Kingfisher aircraft was climbing to 17,500 feet and the Air India aircraft was descending to 18,600 feet on April 5 when they were about 35 nautical miles south of Delhi.

“At this stage,both the aircraft were separated by 1,100 feet and seven nautical miles away from each other laterally as against the standard requirement of 1,000 feet in vertical dimension and three nautical miles laterally,” the AAI said.

“Even though there was a breach of separation by the two aircraft,there was no risk of collision,” the AAI said.