An Air France-KLM flight en route to Paris nearly collided with a Russian bomber on patrol last month, with the two planes coming within 100 meters of each other, a news report said Friday, citing the French pilot and Russian investigators.
The Airbus A319 passenger jet was heading west from Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport and climbing while the Tu-95 bomber was coming from the southwest and descending during the March 14 incident, Izvestia reported.
The incident occurred as one air traffic controller was passing over supervision of the passenger flight to another controller because it was no longer within his range, one of the controllers said.
The planes were supposed to maintain a distance of at least 300 meters.
Russia's federal aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, opened an investigation into the incident following an official complaint by the French pilot.
A similar incident occurred over Moscow in November, when a Boeing passenger jet operated by Transaero came dangerously close to a UTair flight while the former was preparing to land.
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