Air India, IndiGo flights avert collision at Delhi's IGI Airport today

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New Delhi: A near collision was averted on Friday as an Air India and an IndiGo aircraft came face-to-face at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi.

News agency PTI quoted Air India sources as saying that Air India's Delhi-Goa AI156 flight with 122 passengers on board was about to take off from runway 28 at 11.15 am when the Air Traffic Controller (ATC) communicated to the pilot to stop and return to the bay.

Minutes later, IndiGo's Ranchi-Delhi 6E398 landed on the same runway.

"The air traffic control (ATC) asked the commander of AI flight, Captain Amit Tyagi, to reject take off immediately as another plane was landing on runway 27. These two runways are not parallel and taper in the direction where the AI flight was to take off and from where the other plane was coming in to land," The Times of India quoted a source as saying.

The Air India aircraft eventually took off at 12.50 pm.

The Delhi airport's runway 27 and 28 cannot be used at the same time as the two merge towards Dwarka side.