Aircraft Forced to Abort Landing at Last Minute

By Manju V

MUMBAI: A Jet Airways flight which was about to land in Mumbai airport on Friday was asked to abort landing and do a go-around after a SpiceJet aircraft standing on the runway started rolling for take-off.

While go-arounds have now become a regular occurrence in the congested Mumbai airport, this one was a serious matter as there were two aircraft, both climbing on the same direction, albeit from different altitudes.

Hours before this incident, on the same day, a Go Air aircraft landed on a closed runway. On Saturday afternoon there was another go-around at the Mumbai airport, this time involving a Kingfisher Airlines and an Air India flight.

The Friday incident involving the Jet and SpiceJet flights had the aviation fraternity divided as far as the threat perception was concerned.

According to M G Junghare, general manager, aerodrome: “A procedure is followed for a go-around and at no point is the safety of the aircraft compromised. In the Friday’s case, I cannot comment without talking to the air traffic controllers concerned, which was not possible.” Airline spokesperson of Jet Airways and Spice Jet are yet to comment. Junghare said that the Saturday afternoon case of Kingfisher Airlines flight being asked to do a go-around happened as an AI flight had delayed in vacating the runway.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation too has been taking pains to point out to the general public that such instances – like aborted landings, go-arounds – are “simple safety procedures carried out the world over”.

“Near miss is not a term to unnecessarily worry about as there are Traffic Alert and Collision System which generates audio alerts to the pilots in the event of both aircraft coming close to one another resulting in safety hazard,” the ministry’s advertisement had said.

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