The incident took place around 9.40pm when IC 416 with about 130 passengers on board was preparing to land on the new runway 29/11. The Singapore Airlines flight SQ408 from Singapore had landed before its scheduled time of 10.10pm but had not been able to clear the runway. The IC flight took a go-around and landed shortly. Passengers described the incident as "completely unnerving, especially since there was another aircraft on the runway and it could have been potentially very dangerous".

The problem of poor runway occupancy time started since the horizontal separation between flights was reduced from five nautical miles to three nautical miles. "Runway occupancy time, the time taken by an aircraft to exit the active runway and get onto the taxiway, has become a serious issue. While there was no danger to flights that had to make a go around, pilots need to be disciplined," said sources in the civil aviation ministry.