ATC hit by staff crunch, near-misses rise in air

NEW DELHI: An Indigo flight came within seconds from colliding with an AirAsia aircraft 33,800 feet above Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district on the night of May 7 this year. Luckily, a mid-air catastrophe was averted and lives of two planeloads of people were saved.

The air-traffic controller (ATC) asked the Delhi-Bengaluru Indigo aircraft to descend, but the signal was wrongly picked by the AirAsia flight, which started to lower its altitude.

At 10.25pm, the two aircraft were just 25-40 seconds from crashing into each other. The accident was averted when the Indigo A320 dived 800 feet in less than 30 seconds. The hair-raising account is only one of many near-misses, whose numbers have spiked this year, data from right to information queries filed by Hindustan Times show.

An HT investigation based on RTI data between 2011 and 2016 has found a 78% rise in the incidents of such potential mid-air collisions between this January and May, when compared to the same period last year.

The data suggest 2016 might record the highest number of near-misses — known as airprox or air proximity — if trends from the first five months hold.

Between 2011 and this May, 129 potential collisions have been reported. More than half of these are because of ATC error and nearly a fifth because of mistakes by the flight crew.

“We have taken a very serious view of this increase in number of near-misses,” said Lalit Gupta, joint director of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. The Airports Authority of India that controls ATCs and airlines Indigo and Spicejet did not respond to requests for comment. Experts say the rise in mid-air collision risk is because of a crippling staff shortage in the ATC, which is working without a quarter of its sanctioned strength. The staff crunch is appalling as India approaches the 20th anniversary of the world’s deadliest mid-air collision, which occurred near Delhi.

In November 1996, a Kazakh fight and a Saudi aircraft crashed into each other in the skies above Chakhri-Dadri near the Capital, killing all 349 people on board. A probe cleared the ATC, but held that a miscommunication between the controller and the Kazakh pilot led to the collision.

An analysis of DGCA records on near-misses from January 2011 to May 31 this year indicates 2016 could record the highest potential collisions since 2011, which registered 29 such incidents. (see graph)

Earlier this month, HT had reported that safety violations by pilots are up 30% from the corresponding period in 2015.

“The numbers of near-misses are alarming. The ATC needs to urgently increase staff strength and airline operators need to keep doing refresher courses for the staff,” said Mohan Ranganathan, a civil aviation safety expert.

Gupta said the DGCA asked all air operators and ATCs to provide detailed classroom sessions on Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) and crew resource management training.

Officials attributed the rise in mid-air scares to a steady climb in air-traffic. But DGCA data show only a 17% increase in on flight operations in 2016, compared to figures from the corresponding period last year. Till May 31 this year, there were 366,781 departures, whereas for the same period in 2015, the figure was 312,542.