Near-miss air incidents plummet

THE number of near-miss incidents involving aircraft in Irish airspace fell to its lowest level in many years in 2005.

New figures from the Irish Aviation Authority show there were just four cases of what are officially described as “air proximity occurrences” last year — a 50% reduction on the number of incidents in 2004 and a sharp reduction on the record number of 19 in 2001.

A total of 65 near-misses with various levels of seriousness have been recorded since 2000.