July 29, 2022
Pakistan’s national airline says an Iranian air traffic controller told a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) pilot to descend 16,000 feet while flying over Iran and that that put him on a collision course with another plane flying below him.
The two planes were described as being only 1,000 feet apart when the collision alert system in both cockpits alerted the two pilots and they changed course to avoid a collision.
PIA said the first plane was flying from Doha in Qatar to Peshawar in Pakistan when the Iranian air traffic controller directed it to descend from 36,000 feet to 20,000 feet July 24.
But another PIA jet was flying over Iran in the opposite direction from Islamabad to Dubai at a lower altitude. The air traffic controller’s order put the two on a collision course.
Hadi Yusef Pur-Azari, a member of the Board of Directors of the Iran Airports and Air Navigation Co. was quoted by the Mehr news agency as saying the PIA report violated the rules of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), although he didn’t say how it violated them. He than said that Iran’s skies are the safest for international flights. This comment came 2-1/2 years after the Pasdaran shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet shortly after it left Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport.
A week after the incident, Mohammad Mohammadi-Bakhsh, president of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, told reporters the fault for the near-collision rested with the Pakistani pilot of the higher-flying plane, who, he said, decided to reduce his altitude without authority. “We have the transcription of the conversation between the pilot and the air traffic control center. The pilot had an inaccurate understanding of the controller’s advice and reduced his altitude without clearance.” He did not release the tape of the conversation.