Providential escape

Two fully-loaded passenger aircraft on Tuesday came face-to-face barely 40 metres away on the taxiway at the Delhi airport but providentially a disaster was averted after commanders of both the planes alerted the air traffic control and switched off their engines.

On a day when a Jet Airways aircraft made an about turn and its belly sunk to the ground in the Dabolim airport in Goa, a departing SpiceJet aircraft found itself in front of an incoming IndiGo Airbus A320 on the same taxiway.

While the IndiGo plane arriving from Lucknow had over 176 passengers on board, the Hyderabad-bound SpiceJet aircraft was carrying 187 passengers when the incident took place.