Civil aviation media said that the Somali Civil Aviation Authority is investigating an imminent collision between an Ethiopian A350 and a Qatar Airways Boeing 787 while they were flying over the Gulf of Aden near Somalia.

These means said that an investigation was being conducted into whether an employee at the Somali Civil Aviation Administration’s control center had mistakenly requested one of the planes to climb to an altitude of 40,000 feet, or whether there had been a breach of the Somali control center by external parties.

The authority said in a statement: “Today at approximately 12:32 pm in East Africa, a Qatar Airways plane (Qatar 6U), which operates the Doha-Entebbe Uganda route and was flying at a constant altitude, was informed ( 38,000 feet) was incorrectly detected by controllers in Mogadishu to rise to an altitude of 40,000 feet, as Ethiopian Airlines Flight No. 602, which was on its way from Addis Ababa to Dubai, was flying in the same place. Fortunately, the TCAS device (the system... Air Collision Avoidance) attached to the plane issued an urgent warning and informed us of the presence of the other plane. The two planes were at a dangerous distance from each other, but the equipment installed on the two planes saved the situation.