A flight carrying 158 passengers from Mumbai to Kolkata became incommunicado for nearly 30 minutes mid-air, leading to alarm in Kolkata on Saturday morning.
Though controllers could track the Airbus A320neo aircraft on the radar as it traversed nearly 400 km in eerie silence, the pilot and co-pilot’s failure to report mandatory points en-route to Kolkata ATC led to concerns in Kolkata. “The radio communication between ATC Kolkata and an arriving IndiGo flight 6E 822 was lost for nearly 30 minutes. Though the plane could be seen moving from the Nagpur sector to Kolkata Upper Raipur sector, the pilot could not be contacted, directly, or through pilots of other nearby aircraft. Only when the plane was sometime into Upper Kolkata West sector, could we re-establish VHF contact with the pilot,” an airport official told TOI.
Pilots have to change frequency, moving from one flight sector to another. It is unclear if this pilot switched to the wrong frequency or the VHF receiver on the aircraft had a snag. The captain later told controllers he did not get any message between 8.10am, somewhere over Raipur, and 8.40am, around Jamshedpur. The aircraft was at 37,000 ft.
Source: Times of India
