Chilean plane has near miss from Russian space junk

Wellington - Flaming pieces of space junk from a Russian satellite coming out of orbit narrowly missed hitting a Lan Chile jet as it flew over the South Pacific heading into Auckland, news reports said Wednesday. The pilot of the Airbus A-340, which had flown from Santiago, told air traffic controllers that the flaming debris passed eight kilometres in front of his plane and behind it about 10 minutes after the jet had entered New Zealand air space Tuesday night. The Airways Corporation of New Zealand, which manages the controllers, said that time was at least 12 hours earlier than when Russian authorities had estimated when they advised nearly two weeks ago that a satellite would be entering Earth's atmosphere in the region. Spokesman Ken Mitchell told the Newstalk ZB radio network that times given for satellites coming out of orbit were usually quite precise. The flight landed safely at Auckland Airport early Wednesday. Had the debris hit it, the outcome would have been catastrophic, the TV3 network said. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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