IAF Dornier behind mid-air scare for PM’s plane

NEW DELHI: It was an Indian Air Force (IAF) Dornier aircraft which came in the flight path of the aircraft carrying prime minister Manmohan Singh, creating a mid-air scare on Tuesday.

Sources said the blip on the radar in New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport very clearly showed the presence of a small aircraft, which was behind the special aircraft carrying PM.

“Initially, the smaller aircraft appeared on the radar and then disappeared from the radar. The gadgets were checked and were found to be fine. Then all flight details of small aircraft flying on a particular air route were checked and the erring aircraft was tracked down,” said a senior DGCA official.

The IAF Boeing 737 with the prime minister on board landed safely, though 16 minutes behind schedule. He was returning to New Delhi from Jamshedpur in Jharkhand. The PM’s plane was on its landing approach over Delhi airspace when the ATC suddenly noticed an unidentified object on the radar.

The high-level probe ordered after the incident reveal that at no point of time did the Dornier breach the air separation limit.

Civil aviation minister Praful Patel said that the incident could not be considered a serious security lapse. “It was not a serious security lapse. The Air Force plane (Dornier) was at a reasonable distance from the PM’s plane,” he said.

He, however, said there was some mix-up in the signals.

“The air separation is 5000 nautical miles when the PM is flying in India and at no point of time the Dornier aircraft came close or breached the vertical separation limit,” said the DGCA official. The PM’s plane flies at a height 30,000 feet and the entire flight path is vacated when the aircraft is on the move.

“On Tuesday when the radar showed the presence of the aircraft, the control tower tried establishing contact with but could not, which led to a real scare,” the official said. Sources said the IAF Dornier aircraft could not respond to the Delhi ATC because its transponder malfunctioned and the pilot had to change course immediately.

When the Dornier aircraft disappeared from radar and failed to respond to the ATCs, the pilot of the PM’s plane was asked to hover over Delhi’s airspace for 16 minutes. The controllers  checked the radars and sounded a full emergency. The plane was directed to a different flight path and it landed on the main runway.

k_yogesh@dnaindia.net