Near-collision of 2 passenger planes averted at Delhi airport

A major mishap was averted at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport Friday after a passenger plane of India's national carrier Air India aborted take-off to avoid collision with an incoming flight of a private airlines on a converging runway, sources said.

The incident took place around noon when Air India's flight number 156 from Delhi to the western state of Goa was cleared for take-off from runway number 28, which was also allotted to a flight of low-cost IndiGo airlines coming from the eastern state of Ranchi, sources said.

The Air India flight, with over 120 passengers on board, aborted the take-off at the last minute, after the Air Traffic Controllers raised an alert. IndiGo's Ranchi-Delhi flight 6E398 landed on the runway number 27 minutes later, sources said.

A probe has been ordered into the incident that took place not long before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to the airport to receive Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who arrived in the country on a four-day state visit.

This is not the first time that such a near-miss incident took place at the airport, one of the busiest in the country. In December 2016, a disaster was averted after two planes, both belonging to low-cost airlines of IndiGo and SpiceJet, came dangerously face-to-face on the runaway.

The SpiceJet flight was about to take off at a time when another passenger flight of IndiGo had just landed on the same runaway, possibly due to miscommunication with air traffic controllers, but both the pilots managed to avert a disaster. Endit