DUBAI - Saudi Arabian Airlines and Gulf Air were involved in a midair scare on Thursday after their aircraft came dangerously close over Mumbai, newspapers have reported.The Saudia plane made an unauthorised manoeuvre into the airspace of the Gulf Air plane, triggering its onboard collision avoidance alarm, while the two aircraft where passing over the city, Indian and Bahraini newspapers reported.
The Saudia plane came within 800 vertical feet from the Gulf Air plane, the papers said. The prescribed limit for vertical separation between two planes is a minimum 1,000 feet.
"The Saudi aircraft had climbed 200 feet without permission from the Air Traffic Control ... The pilot of the Gulf Air aircraft had spotted another aircraft climbing into its airspace on his warning system," Indian Express newspaper said, quoting an airport official.
The Gulf Air plane was flying from Manama to Mumbai carrying 180 people, while the Saudia plane was travelling over Mumbai on route from Dhaka to Riyadh with 377 passengers onboard, the papers said.
The Indian official suggested the incident was an air safety issue but the planes were not close to collision.
In 1996, in one of the deadliest crashes in aviation history, a Saudia Boeing 747 with 312 people aboard collided near Delhi with an Ilyushin freighter from Kazakhstan carrying 37 people.