<\/p>\n
NEW DELHI, June 3 (TNS): In a major scare, the VVIP aircraft \u201cMeghdoot\u201d flying Indian foreign minister\u00a0Sushma Swaraj\u00a0from Trivandrum to Mauritius, on her way to South Africa, went incommunicado for 12-14 minutes, Indian media reported on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The scare happened when Mauritian air traffic control and the crew of the Embraer 135 Legacy flying Swaraj \u2014 which was cruising safely \u2014 could not establish contact with each other for some time after the plane entered the island nation\u2019s airspace.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver oceanic airspace, air traffic control (ATC) globally waits for 30 minutes to declare a plane missing if it does not contact it on entering its airspace of flight information region. In this case, the Mauritius authorities pressed the alarm button 12 minutes after the flight IFC-31 entered its airspace and contact could not be established with the plane,\u201d said a senior official of\u00a0Airports Authority India\u00a0(AAI), the parent organisation for ATC here.<\/p>\n
On its part, the external affairs ministry denied knowledge of the scare.<\/p>\n
Mauritius then declared \u201cINCERFA\u201d alarm, which in aviation parlance means an uncertainty phase wherein it is not known if the aircraft and its occupants are safe. They contacted the Chennai air traffic control, which was the last flight information region (FIR, a specified region of airspace in which a flight information service is provided and it is the largest regular division of airspace globally) to be in touch with the Embraer ERJ135 named \u201cMeghdoot\u201d.<\/p>\n
The plane had taken off from Trivandrum at 2.08pm. \u201cThe local ATC passed it on to Chennai FIR which later passed it on to Mauritius FIR. (A plane passes through several FIRs and remains in touch with the ATC of that FIR). Once the alarm was sounded, everyone gets vigilant for the plane for which it has been sounded. The Indian ATC may also have tried to contact the plane on VHF,\u201d said the AAI official.<\/p>\n
The pilots of the Embraer, for which the alarm was sounded at 4.44 pm, contacted Mauritius ATC at 4.58 pm, after which everyone heaved a sigh of relief. The Embraer does not have a long range and Sushma, who is flying it from India to South Africa to attend a BRICS and India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) ministerial meetings, had to take three refuelling or technical stops \u2014 Delhi-Trivandrum-Mauritius-South Africa.<\/p>\n
A senior ATC official said communication over oceanic area is often problematic due to erratic VHF communication. \u201cSometimes pilots are unable or forget to contact the Mauritius area. That oceanic area has no radar coverage and everything depends on VHF\/HF communication. Such places where VHF coverage is not good are known as dark zones,\u201d said the official.<\/p>\n
The 14-minute long uncertainty phase (INCERFA) is first of the three emergency phases under International Civil Aviation Organisation\u2019s Chicago Convention. The second is \u201calert phase\u201d (ALERFA) in which apprehension exists as to the safety of an aircraft and its occupants. The third is \u201cdistress phase\u201d (DETRESFA) wherein there is a reasonable certainty that an aircraft and its occupants are threatened by grave and imminent danger and require immediate assistance.<\/p>\n
Luckily, the 14-minute-long scare involving Swaraj\u2019s VVIP plane ended with the first stage itself.<\/p>\n
Courtesy: Times of India<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW DELHI, June 3 (TNS): In a major scare, the VVIP aircraft \u201cMeghdoot\u201d flying Indian foreign minister\u00a0Sushma Swaraj\u00a0from Trivandrum to Mauritius, on her way to South Africa, went incommunicado for 12-14 minutes, Indian media reported on Sunday. The scare happened when Mauritian air traffic control and the crew of the Embraer 135 Legacy flying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67987"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67989,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67987\/revisions\/67989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}