Sushma plane goes off radar for 14 mins
NEW DELHI: An Indian Air Force (IAF) plane carrying Union external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj went off radar for 14 minutes while approaching Mauritius on Saturday, prompting air traffic control (ATC) in the African nation to trigger an alarm, officials familiar with the developments said.
Swaraj was flying from Thiruvananthapuram to Mauritius and had passed the Male (Maldives) airspace before the plane briefly went “missing”. Indian ATC officials said that communications can sometimes be a problem over the Oceanic airspace.
The normal procedure is for ATC to wait before activating the INCERFA (uncertainty phase) alert but Indian government officials said this may have been done because they did not want to take any chances considering that Swaraj was on board.
Swaraj was flying from Delhi to South Africa to attend a BRICS meeting and India-brazil-south Africa (IBSA) ministerial meetings. The Embraer aircraft cannot fly for long ranges, and was scheduled to make two transit stops — at Trivandrum and Mauritius— before landing in South Africa, airport officials said.
The Indian Air Force flight IFC31 left Thiruvananthapuram at 1408 IST, according to airport officials, and the Male ATC established contact with it at 1644 IST.
“However, IFC 31 could not contact Mauritius ATC after entering Mauritius airspace. Mauritius ATC then activated INCERFA,” a spokesperson for the Airports Authority of India (AAI) said.
“Later, at 1658 IST, IFC 31 came in contact with Mauritius ATC and landed. The Mauritius ATC activated INCERFA (uncertainty phase) without waiting for the stipulated 30 minutes to lapse from the time when aircraft last contacted ATC. This was perhaps done because the flight was carrying a VIP,” the spokesperson added.