At a time of increased concerns about the security of the air traffic control systems in Macedonia, as the scandal around Zaev’s right hand man Dragi Raskovski develops, the Lider news site reports about a near miss that occurred two months ago.
According to the news site, which cites sources inside the M-NAV air traffic control, a Turkish Airlines plane and a Dutch Transavia plane, with hundreds of people on board, were put on near collision course while flying over Macedonia.
The alleged incident occurred on May 8th, and Lider published a video recording from the publicly available air traffic movement site flightradar24, which appears to shows a passenger plane swerving at the last minute as it nears another plane.
One of the planes involved was an Airbus 330-200, flying from Atlanta to Istanbul, while the other was a Transavia Boeing 737, taking passengers from Tel Aviv to Amsterdam. They both entered Macedonian air space and, according to Lider, had a near miss over lake Dojran.
The report comes as the public M-NAV air traffic control company is under an increased scrutiny, after a leaked tape showed Dragi Raskovski, the Government’s Secretary General, discussing the procurement of valuable equipment for the company and speaking disparagingly about the bidders. Media outlets close to the Government came to Raskovski’s defense, reporting that the involvement of the Government was appropriate since months before a incident occurred when the air traffic control systems briefly went down.
Raskovski acknowledged the veracity of the recording, and said that he was discussing the matter with M-NAV director Nikolce Taseski.
According to Lider, it was a close friend of Taseski who was involved in the near miss between the two passenger planes in May, and the case is being covered up by M-NAV to protect its employee.
The Turkish Airlines plane entered Macedonian air space from Kosovo and was recognized by Macedonian air control and put under their guidance. The plane was about to exit Macedonian air space when the Transavia plane entered it and asked for approval to elevate its altitude. This was quickly approved by Macedonian controllers, we were informed, bringing the two planes in a serious danger of collision. They were both flying at about 29.000 feet, with speeds of between 750 and 950 kilometers per hour, and were approaching each other. This catastrophic error activated the alarm systems in the Macedonian control system, but also in the systems in neighboring countries. The Macedonian controller, who was head of the shift and personally gave the approval, missed the alarm and lost control over the developments at the sky above the country, Lider reports.
According to Lider, Tasevski and his deputy Irena Kalicanin were out of the country at the time, but phoned in to give instructions and assess the incident, eventually determining that nobody should be blamed for the incident. The news site claims that M-NAV has a recording of the incident.
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