THE death of more than 350 people in the Indian air disaster - the world's worst-ever mid-air collision - brings home to all of us our latent fear of flying.

Yet, at such times, we look at the statistics showing how safe air travel really is and draw confidence from the state-of-the-art technology that surrounds it.

It is chilling, then, to have that trust corroded by the disclosure that in places of the world like India the basic way that planes are kept apart is by them talking to each other and to the ground.

The mere fact that language difficulties are bound to cause misunderstandings is worrying enough.

But add to this the revelation that the instruments in Russian-built planes, like one of those in this tragedy, measure altitude in metres though the international standard for planes and for air traffic control is measurements in feet, then it is plain that there is a recipe for confusion and error.

Furthermore, the growth of air travel has extended the life of many planes and fuelled a huge second-hand market in used jets which, though they may not be actual bangers, are bound to be less up-to-date in safety technology.

Much tougher international regulation, it seems, is needed if we are not to have repeats of this kind of disaster.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.