KARACHI, Jan 17: A major air disaster was averted due to timely functioning of an automatic warning system in two passenger planes, which accidentally came face to face at the same altitude over Panjgur in the west of Balochistan.

An Air Blue flight was headed for Islamabad from Dubai. While flying at an altitude of 33,000ft altitude, it came in front of an Eva Airways flight bound for Hong Kong from Europe, on Tuesday morning.Fortunately, the planes escaped a head-on collision as the automatic warning system came into play when the two planes were five nautical miles apart, over Panjgur. Responding to the warning, the Air Blue plane descended while the Eva Air flight took an ascent.

Upon landing in Islamabad, the captain of the Air Blue flight reported the incident to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which launched a probe to ascertain how the planes were flying on the same air route.

According to sources, preliminary findings attributed the matter to the negligence of Air Traffic Control.