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CHARKHI DADRI, India -- 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.
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.
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 aircraft were traveling at hundreds of miles per hour at the time of the
crash. They were heading toward one another at about six miles per minute.
With 13 miles separating the two aircraft, the pilots had two minutes to
avoid a crash.
The exact cause of the crash may take months to determine. But speculation
already has focused on antiquated radar equipment and poor communications.
Yogesh Chandra, India's top civil aviation official, said the army has
restricted air space over Delhi, reducing the airport to only one air
corridor for civilian aircraft.
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.
Mr. 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," he said. "The controller is handicapped by missing one
crucial piece of data."
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," 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. |
