Authorities met yesterday to discus an incident in which a military helicopter and civilian passenger jet “narrowly missed” colliding over HCMC’s Tan Son Nhat Airport on October 29.
The initial report on the incident, submitted by the Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation (VATM), found that a Vietnam Airlines Airbus A321 and a Mi172/423 helicopter nearly collided due to poor communication between the civilian and military control towers at the airport.
Do Quang Viet, deputy head of the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam (CAAV) told Tuoi Tre that “the military air traffic controller had not complied with flight safety procedures and failed to coordinate with the civil traffic air controller at the airport.”
“If he want the helicopter to fly across the flight path of the Airbus, the military air traffic controller must notify the civil air traffic controller in advance, but the former did not do so, leading to the incident,” Viet added.
So how close did the aircraft get?
“Not long after take-off, at 11:41 am, when the plane was at an elevation of 1,000 feet (304.8 meters), the pilot detected a Mi 172/423 helicopter flying horizontally at the same height,” said the VATM report.
A separate report from Vietnam Airlines said that the incident occurred at 500 feet (152 meters) and that the distance between the two aircraft was only 200 feet (60 meters)
It’s been a tough year for Vietnam’s aviation industry. Beyond a similar incident which occurred in July, planes have landed at the wrong airport, on the wrong runway and the country’s two main airports received poor reviews in international rankings.
But hey, at least we got sleep pods.
