NEW DELHI: The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has suspended the licence of an air traffic controller (ATCO) at Bengaluru Airport for three months and issued a warning letter to another one for allowing two IndiGo aircraft to take off simultaneously — one headed to Kolkata and other to Bhubaneswar – in the same direction on January 7, 2022.
This action against the two has been taken for other lapses too discovered by the regulator like not reporting this serious incident which was brought to the notice of authorities by a TOI report.
Just how narrowly a disaster was averted that day becomes clear from this: “at the closest point of conflict, the vertical and lateral separation between both aircraft was 100 feet (instead of the required 1,000 feet) and 0.9 nautical miles or NM (instead of the standard 3 NM),” said a senior DGCA official.
