NEW DELHI: The episode of Pakistan scrambling F-16 fighter jets for a SpiceJet aircraft on a schedule commercial Delhi-Kabul flight last month has led to heads getting rolling in India.

It has emerged that the "transponder code" allotted to the aircraft by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) was a military one and not that of a schedule commercial airliner. This discrete code is given to identify an aircraft uniquely on radar across the flight path it takes. "A DGCA official has been suspended for this lapse," said an official.

Sources say the code mistakenly allotted to SpiceJet aircraft was of AN 32 used by Indian Air Force . This inadvertent error was so serious that, once resolved, Indian aviation authorities personally thanked their Pakistani counterparts for handling the August 30 incident sensitively. Following the incident, DGCA has computerised the issuance of transponder codes to aircraft.

