When two aircraft at city airport came close to a crash

Bengaluru/Chennai: On March 29, passengers on board SpiceJet flight 614 and Air Mauritius flight 746 deplaned and streamed out of the airport, oblivious that the two aircraft had flown close - too close -- in Chennai International Airport airspace.
This has gone down in the Directorate General of Civil Aviation's (DGCA) record as a near-miss. An incident is considered a near-miss when two aircraft are in such proximity that their safety in the air stands compromised.
The incident happened around 6am. The SpiceJet plane to Mumbai was given clearance for takeoff but, reportedly, there was a minor delay of a few seconds in starting the run and in becoming air borne. This forced the air traffic controllers to instruct the Air Mauritius plane to do a go-round.
The airlines have not reported the incident, probably because the planes were not close enough for a proximity alarm to go off in the cockpit. An Airports Authority of India (AAI) official said, an internal investigation had been ordered and action would be taken. "We have enough checks to ensure that there will not be a collision. But, minor incidents happen because of increase in traffic," he added.
In fact, in just 12 months between March 3, 2015, and March 29, 2016, there have been 35 such near-misses. All these cases have occurred in just eight airport airspaces, including one in Jammu (IAF-controlled) airport, information accessed by TOI reveals. Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai airspace account for 26 incidents.
From miscommunication to wrongly assigning instructions, there have been varied reasons for such proximity incidents and near-misses.