Nội Bài International Airport.—VNA/VNS Illustrative Photo Huy Hùng

Errors in the implementation of the working process by air traffic controllers have been blamed for the near-collision of two aircraft at Nội Bài International Airport on June 24.

Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation (VATM) released the initial cause of the incident on Wednesday afternoon.

The corporation said that on June 30, it had received a report from crews and a preliminary report from the Northern Flight Management Company about the incident between flight AIQ645 and flight VJC943.

According to the report, the incident occurred at Nội Bài International Airport at 21:20 local time on June 24 when flight AIQ645 departed for Don Mueang International Airport in Thailand on runway 11R. At the same time, flight VJC943 was about to land on runway 11L, parallel to runway 11R.

Air traffic controllers told flight AIQ645 to stop and wait before taking off and allow flight VJC943 to cross runway 11R to enter the apron.

However, the crew of flight AIQ645 only focused on the permit of taking off and forgot the instruction of stopping and waiting until flight VJC943 passed runway 11R.

The air traffic controllers also did not know that the crew missed the instruction.

So, flight AIQ645 was performing a take-off run on runway 11R while flight VJC943 was running across the runway. The distance between the two planes was about 1.5km. 

Notably, after detecting the incident, the air traffic controllers did not take any action to handle the situation.

At that time, the ground monitoring system issued a red warning for the two flights.

To handle the situation, the corporation has established an internal investigation team to clarify the cause of the incident and ordered the Northern Flight Management Company to immediately warn all air traffic controllers to draw experiences from the incident.

The Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam has ordered the corporation to temporarily suspend the air traffic controllers related to the incident to serve the investigation. — VNS