The passengers of a Kingfisher Airlines flight had a close shave on Tuesday night. But, for the second time this year, a major disaster was averted at Chennai airport by Air Traffic Control (ATC) officials.

Sources said two aircraft of Kingfisher and SpiceJet, one that was cleared to land and the other that was scheduled to take off, came very close to colliding on the runway, but a timely alert issued by ATC averted the disaster.

According to the sources, the Kingfisher flight to Coimbatore entered the runway without clearance while at the same time, on the same runway, a SpiceJet flight was due for landing.

The SpiceJet flight, scheduled to land, was given clearance by the ATC but Kingfisher aircraft had not  been given any clearance to enter the runway.

If timely action was not taken, two planes on the same runway at the same time would have led to disaster. The mishap was prevented after the plane was noticed by the ATC staff and warned the SpiceJet plane to do a go-around (defer landing and keeping aircraft in the air) till the runway was cleared.

However, none of the officials of both the airlines are available for any comment.