Indian and Kazak Officials Trade Accusations in Air Collision

Indian aviation officials have become embroiled in a finger-pointing battle with officials of the Kazak airline that was one of the two carriers involved in the collision on Tuesday that killed 349 people.

Since the accident near New Delhi, which killed more people than any other collision in the air in aviation history, several top officials in the Indian aviation hierarchy have denied suggestions that the country's air traffic control system is dangerously outdated. Instead, they have said that the most likely cause of the collision was pilot error, or equipment malfunction, on the part of the Kazakstan Airlines Ilyushin-76 jet that was descending to land at New Delhi when it struck a Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 that had taken off seven minutes before. Both aircraft plunged to the ground, and all aboard were killed.

Officials of the Kazak airline have angrily denied Indian suggestions that the collision could have resulted from the Kazak flight crew's failure to understand instructions that an Indian air traffic controller gave them in English, the international aviation language, saying that the pilot of the plane, Aleksandr Cherepanov, spoke ''perfect English.''

Indian aviation officials' denials of any Indian responsibility in the crash have contrasted with a barrage of criticism for the officials that has flowed from many of India's leading newspapers. The newspapers have reported a series of near-collisions between airliners in Indian airspace in recent years, including one in April this year in which an Air France jumbo jet narrowly missed an Indian Airlines Airbus near New Delhi. The newspapers have also said that plans to upgrade the New Delhi airport's air traffic control system have been repeatedly delayed.

''The air disaster is an implicit warning about the wide gap between the professed ambitions for economic advancement and the mediocrity and lack of competence of our Government at both the political and bureaucratic level,'' The Times of India said in an editorial today.

Indian officials had said previously that the flight data recorders from both the Kazak aircraft and the Saudi plane, which were recovered in what was described as good condition from the two crash sites on Wednesday, would be examined by Indian aviation experts in Bombay.

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