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CHARKHI DADRI, India (AP) - As
a Kazak cargo plane flew head-on toward a Saudi jetliner, controllers told its
pilot to watch out for the 747 in the clouds ahead. The pilot asked how close it
was.
"Fourteen miles," a controller said.
Seconds later: "Thirteen miles."
The pilot's acknowledgement of that message was the last word New Delhi
airport flight controllers had from either aircraft before they hit and spun to
earth in spectacular twin fireballs, taking 349 people to their deaths.
The exchanges, in transcripts released yesterday, indicate the planes did not
see each other in time and hint that the pilots were misled by their instruments
or misunderstood the tower's directions. They were supposed to pass with a
1,000-foot difference in altitude - instructions that the Saudi plane's pilots
never confirmed, the transcripts show.
The Saudi Boeing 747 was seven minutes into its flight and the Kazak plane
was descending for its final approach into Indira Gandhi International Airport
when the collision occurred Tuesday about 60 miles southwest of New Delhi.
Whether there was a last-minute evasive
manoeuvre by either plane was unclear,
but India's top civil aviation ministry official said the crash was not direct.
"It was not a head-on collision," Yogesh Chandra said at a news conference.
"The cockpit and fuselage of the Kazak airliner was found intact."
Searchers retrieved hundreds of bodies from wreckage strewn in a six-mile
area around Charkhi Dadri. Grieving relatives tried to identify the badly
mangled remains of their loved ones lying on blocks of ice at makeshift morgues.
Many of the victims of the Saudi Airlines flight that carried 312 passengers
and crew apparently were Indian workers returning to jobs in the Middle East or
making the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca; the Kazak plane carrying 37 people had
been chartered by a clothing company in Kazakstan.
A weeping Irene Colaso said she identified her 20-year-old daughter Sanim, a
flight attendant on the Saudi plane, by her feet - the rest of her body was
burned beyond recognition.
Searchers found the flight data recorders of both planes yesterday but only
the cockpit voice recorder of the Kazak plane. The recordings were not made
public immediately.
But flight control transcripts showed that the airport tower instructing the
Kazak plane to fly at 15,000 feet and the Saudi plane, which was ascending, to
level off at 14,000 feet. The Saudi plane never acknowledged the order to hold
its altitude.
The tower then tells the Kazak plane's pilot that the Saudi aircraft is 14
miles away: "Identified traffic 12 o'clock reciprocal. Saudi Boeing 747, 14
miles. Report in sight."
The Kazak pilot replied: "Report how many miles?
"Fourteen miles now," the tower said.
The aircraft were travelling at hundreds of miles per hour at the time of the
crash; the Boeing 747 takes off at about 200 mph, reaching a maximum speed of
600 mph, while the slightly slower Ilyushin-76 flown by Kazakstan Airlines lands
at about 150 mph.
At that speed, the planes heading toward one another were eating up about six
miles per minute. With 13 miles separating the two aircraft, the pilots had just
two minutes to avoid a crash.
The exact cause of the crash, the third-deadliest crash in aviation history,
may take months to determine. But speculation already has focused on antiquated
radar equipment and poor communications.
Chandra, the civil aviation official, said the army has restricted air space
over Delhi, reducing the airport to only one air corridor for civilian aircraft
landing and taking off.
A.K. Bhardwaj, assistant general-secretary of the Air Traffic Controllers
Guild, said his union had been demanding separate corridors because traffic at
the airport has increased from 170 daily arrivals and departures three years ago
to as many as 290 now.
Bhardwaj also said the equipment he and his colleagues use to direct planes
is inadequate.
"I have a belief that no other country is using this sort of radar, which
gives only the image of the aircraft. It doesn't show me any altitude," Bhardwaj
told The Associated Press. "The controller is handicapped by missing one crucial
piece of data."
Controllers see planes passing each other at different altitudes as two radar
blips converging, then diverging.
"In this case, the controller saw that both blips were overlapping, but they
never separated," Bhardwaj said.
Massachusetts-based Raytheon Co. began installing a radar system two years
ago at the airport that would show planes' altitude, but the Federal Aviation
Administration has twice refused to certify the new system, said Barry French, a
Raytheon spokesperson.
French said such refusals were not unusual as technical problems were worked
out, and that the new system would be operational early next year.
Other theories were floated to explain the collision.
The controllers guild suggested that the pilots of the Kazak plane, working
with instruments using metric readings, may have misunderstood the
feet-denominated instructions from controllers.
The Indian Express newspaper, saying the accident was a "disaster waiting to
happen," on yesterday quoted aviation officials as saying there had been 10
recent near-misses in India's skies, most involving airlines from former Soviet
republics.
Many of the problems were blamed on the pilots' poor understanding of
English, the newspaper said.
Experts also say Russian-built planes like the Kazak jet often don't have
equipment to detect the altitudes of nearby aircraft. Such transponders are
required in Europe and the United States, said aviation writer John Nance of
Tacoma, Wash.
The Saudi plane carried two Americans. Their names and hometowns have not
been released.
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