Airline Near Miss Reports Baseless - Gulf Air
Gulf Daily News
Bahrain, Apr 21: GULF Air yesterday dismissed as untrue claims that one of its aircraft barely avoided a mid-air crash with an Air India plane over Kerala.
According to the New Indian Express, a Bahrain-bound Gulf Air flight and a Kozhikode-bound Air India flight missed a mid-air collision by just 10 seconds last week.
However, Gulf Air corporate communications acting head Adnan Malek described the report as baseless and said there were no flight records to substantiate the incident.
"Our flight records are up to date and there is no record of any such incident having taken place or any information that can substantiate this incident," he told the GDN.
"This would never have been missed by our operations, it's very serious.
"This report is baseless and we are not aware of any incident of this nature."
Air India manager for Bahrain and Jordan D Debesh said he wasn't aware of such an incident either.
"I have no idea of this incident and no information about it," said the official.
"This happened in Indian airspace and we have no information, it is not under my jurisdiction."
Debesh said Air India staff in India would not comment to the Press and referred them to India's Air Traffic Control for more information.
However, Indian Air Traffic Control officials were unavailable for comment yesterday.
According to the New Indian Express, the Gulf Air flight took off from Cochin International Airport and was climbing when it narrowly missed the Air India plane by 400 feet.
It claims Gulf Air pilots informed the Mangalore tower and lodged a formal complaint, based on which the Airports Authority has launched an investigation.