The Transaero Boeing 747 was en route from Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic, to Moscow on Friday at a height of 10,000 meters, when it was involved in the near miss with a U.S. a Delta Air Lines plane, with 152 passengers on board, official Transaero spokesman, Sergei Bykhal said.
"During the flight the aircraft's Traffic Collision Avoidance System went off. Later, we discovered that a U.S. Delta airliner was heading to the left of the Transaero aircraft," Bykhal said.
The pilot of the Russian airliner descended 200 to 300 feet to avoid the U.S. passenger aircraft and later resumed the normal flight level, the spokesman said, adding that his actions have been described as irreproachable.
The Russian airliner arrived at 12.05 p.m. Moscow time [08:05 GMT] on Friday at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport on schedule. An investigation into the incident has been launched.
In 2002, 69 people, including 45 children, were killed in a midair collision, involving a Boeing 757 cargo plane and a Tu-154 passenger aircraft, over Lake Constance, near the German border with Switzerland.
The crash occurred when the only officer on duty, Peter Nielsen, was working on his own, in breach of safety procedures. Nielsen who was monitoring up to 15 flights when the accident happened failed to notice the two planes closing in on each other.
Independent investigations said that vital safety equipment had been switched off during the tragedy and identified organizational deficiencies with the air traffic control company, Skyguide, which contributed to the midair crash.
Nielsen was stabbed to death in February 2004 by a Russian national, who lost his wife and both of his children in the crash. Vitaly Kaloyev was sentenced to eight years in prison after being found guilty of murder by a Swiss court. He was later released from prison in November 2007.
