Two Qantas planes in near-miss after tower bungle

INVESTIGATIONS have begun into how close two Qantas planes came to mid-air disaster over South Australia after a traffic control blunder yesterday.

The two Qantas planes needed to take evasive action after a traffic controller gave one plane permission to fly towards another over Gulf St Vincent, about 20 kilometres west of Adelaide.

News Corporation is reporting that the Airbus A330s came within about 200 metres of a collision.

However, a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) says that has not been confirmed by the team investigating the incident.

"An investigation team is put together of suitably qualified and experienced people and they will be talking to the pilots involved, the air traffic crew, gaining recorded information from the aircraft," the spokesman said.