 "SpiceJet, GoaAir incident: Beginning of 2016 saw 10 such incidents, 25 in 2015")
Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has initiated a probe, sources said, into a near miss incident between SpiceJet's Hyderabad-bound plane from Goa and a GoAir aircraft operating on Nagpur-Mumbai route in Goa airspace on Saturday, according to media reports.
The incident triggered the planes' traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) and forced their respective pilots into action to take corrective measures.
Sources told news agency PTI that SpiceJet's flight SG-3604 experienced a TCAS warning when it breached the minimum required vertical separation distance with GoAir flight G8-141, while in Goa airspace.
Not the first such incident this year
India's most successful budget carrier, IndiGo, had a scare in August this year when two of its planes averted a mid-air collision over Dhaka airspace.
The civil aviation ministry had ordered a probe into the incident involving the two aircraft, which were carrying over 225 passengers and crew.
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The incident involved IndiGo's Mumbai to Guwahati flight 6E-813 and Chennai flight 6E-136.
Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju had said that the incident would be probed by the aviation regulator.
"Incident involving @IndiGo6E planes at Guwahati will be probed," Raju had tweeted.
While Business Standard could not access the number of such incidents which have occurred in Indian airspace till October this year, 35 'near-miss' incidents involving aircraft of various airlines have been reported in Indian airspace between January 2015 and March this year.
In a written reply in the Lok Sabha in May this year, then minister of state for civil aviation Mahesh Sharma had said that 10 near-miss incidents involving aircraft had occurred in Indian airspace in 2016, till the end of March.
The figure for 2015 stood at 25.
How are these incidents probed?
The Airprox Investigation Board, constituted by DGCA, probes all such incidents, after which these investigations are reviewed at the DGCA, Sharma had informed the Lok Sabha while presenting the figures.
Airprox is a situation when two aircraft come dangerously close to each other.
According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, "airprox" is defined as a situation in which, in the opinion of a pilot or air traffic services personnel, the distance between aircraft as well as their relative positions and speed have been such that the safety of the aircraft involved may have been compromised.
Further, as reported earlier, two aircraft can fly at minimum permitted vertical separation of 1,000 feet in the Indian airspace, and a breach in this separation prompts the TCAS to go off.