An Emirates A380 plane almost collided (near miss) with an Air Seychelles plane after mis-communication on the radio between the Emirates pilot and Mauritious air traffic control.
The flight was EK703, flying to Mauritius on the 14th of July. The Emirates plane was flying at 40,000 feet. The Mauritius Air Traffic control gave permission to the pilot to reduce altitude to 38,000. However, the pilot misheard it as 36,000 and when he read the number back to confirm, the tower controller also misheard the call and confirmed the 36,000 call. This was a huge problem because there was another flight heading their way, a Seychelles plane HM054 flight.
Luckily the mistake was spotted one of the planes turned to the right before collision.
The controller seems to be accusing the Emirates pilot of being the cause of the incident, but the controller also was responsible to confirm the read back correctly.
Here’s the video of a live flight monitor and the full radio transmissions that happened:
