In a horrifying incident which could eventuated in hundreds of deaths, three passenger planes of different foreign carriers were known to come extremely close to one another in Delhi. With consistent alert from the Air Traffic Control (ATC), all three aircrafts narrowly escaped from a predictable collision.
The episode occurred last 23rd december, when three aircrafts – Dutch carrier KLM, Taiwan’s Eva Air and the US-based National Airlines came alarmingly close to each other. The Dutch KLM aircraft was taking its flight from Amsterdam to Bangkok; the Eva Air flight was on its way to Vienna from Bangkok and the National Airlines’ flight NCR 840 was enroute to Hong Kong from Afghanistan.
According to an official, all three flights were above the height of 30,000 ft inspite of the warning of Traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS). Again the pilot of the NCR 840 reportedly asking permission from the ATC to climb to 35,000 ft, but was denied of.
As explained by an official, “When the air ATC watched it climbing, it was quickly requested to take a left turn. In the meanwhile, EVA also kept moving at flight level 33,000 ft, a dimension at which KLM was at that point flying, and at this time, another TCAS warning went off, alerting the pilots to guide the flying machines to a more secure separation.”
After being denied of the height for which NCR 840 was asking for, it once again descended, coming precariously close to the EVA flight, setting off another alert.
The incident is now under the probe of The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB).
In a comparable incident, two IndiGo aircrafts, flying in the airspace over the India-Bangladesh outskirt, were said to have turned away a mid-air impact on October 31. The two planes were just 45 seconds away from the crash, when the ATC intervene and took the control.
So how to fight out these odds? The scientists, in order to prevent the loss of lives in such unfortunate incident, have come up with an interesting solution – a detachable capsule cabin for passengers!
The cabin that is permanently attached to the airplane is replaced with a detachable capsule which will work during emergency situations.
If at any point of time whether be it take off, landing or during the fly, there is an emergency situation, the cabin can be separated and can safely land on water or land with the help of parachutes or rubber tubes attached to it, as per the requirement.
Again to be more precise the same inventor came up with another idea, instead of a detachable capsule, the plane can have an opening at the back of it and the entire cabin can come out of it. The rescuing process will be similar to the first idea.
Although, how the dynamics of such an architecture will work in the air, pilots need to be more conscious about the hazards. After all it is the question of hundreds of innocent lives they are carrying every day.
