Airliners carrying a total of 348 people came within 40 seconds of colliding over southern Norway at the weekend, the Oslo newspaper VG quoted a Norwegian aviation official as confirming.

Alarms aboard the planes triggered a course-correcting alert as they approached at an altitude of 11,000m.

The official confirmed that the aircraft involved were an SAS airliner with 255 passengers and 13 crew flying from Copenhagen to Washington, and a KLM aircraft with 76 passengers and four crew flying from Trondheim to Amsterdam.