Air India Flight 101
| Air India Flight 101 | |
|---|---|
 A plane of the same type from Air India |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Controlled Flight Into Terrain (impact on a mountain) |
| place | Rocher de Tournette in the area of the Glacier des Bossons , Montblanc massif , France |
| date | January 24, 1966 |
| Fatalities | 117 |
| Survivors | no |
| Injured | 0 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 707-437 |
| operator | Air India |
| Mark | VT-DMN |
| Surname | "Kanchenjunga" |
| Departure airport | Bombay Airport (now: Mumbai) , India |
| 1. Stopover | Delhi Airport , India |
| 2. Stopover | Beirut Airport , Lebanon |
| 3. Stopover | Geneva Airport , Switzerland |
| 4. Stopover | London Heathrow Airport , UK |
| Destination airport | John F. Kennedy International Airport , United States |
| Passengers | 106 |
| crew | 11 |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
Air India Flight 101 was a scheduled international flight from Bombay (now: Mumbai ) to New York with stopovers in Delhi , Beirut , Geneva and London Heathrow . The Boeing 707 aircraft had an accident on January 24, 1966 on the Montblanc massif.
Course of the accident
The aircraft with the name Kanchenjunga (named after an eight-thousander in the Himalayas ) had entered service in 1961 and had completed 16,188 flight hours without any major incidents. The flight to Beirut had passed without any special events. During the flight, however, one of the two rotary radio beacon (VOR) receivers for position determination failed .
At about 07:02 local time, flight captain JT d'Souza reported to flight control that he was approaching Geneva at FL190 ( flight level 190 = 19,000 feet = 5,800 m). He was then instructed to maintain this altitude. If visibility would allow it, he could descend and fly over the Montblanc summit at a distance of about 1000 feet (“maintain [FL190] unless able to descend VMC one thousand on top”) . The captain confirmed receipt of the instruction and replied that the machine was about to fly over the Montblanc. However, the aircraft controller recognized that the machine had not yet reached Mont Blanc and replied: “You have 5 miles to the Mont Blanc” , to which the captain replied with “Roger” . Flight 101 then left its preset altitude and went into descent.
At around 7:07 a.m., the aircraft crashed into Mont Blanc at an altitude of 15,585 feet (4,750 m), about 60 meters below the summit, and crashed. When it hit the rock face at a rate of at least 500 km / h, the aircraft was completely destroyed and the debris was scattered over a wide area. There were no survivors. At this point in time it was the second most serious aircraft accident on French soil after fatalities with 117 deaths and the 16th total loss of a Boeing aircraft of this type. The victims of the accident included the leading Indian elementary particle and atomic physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha and high-ranking officials from Air India. The flight recorder could not be found.
A commission of inquiry came to the conclusion after more than a year that the weather conditions at the time of the accident would not have allowed it to fly only 1000 feet over the Montblanc summit. Ultimately, the cause of the accident was an obviously misleading communication between the pilot and the controller, so that the pilots continued to believe that they had already flown over the summit.
The accident occurred almost at the same place where more than 15 years earlier, on November 3, 1950, a Lockheed L-749A Constellation also of Air India with the name Malabar Princess had crashed on Air India Flight 245 . At that time, all 48 people on board were killed.
Late finds
Even decades after the aircraft accidents , finds are still being made in the area of the Glacier des Bossons glacier , which flows down on the northern flank of Mont-Blanc :
- In 2008, a climber found several Indian newspapers dated January 23, 1966.
- On September 8, 2012, a mailbag with diplomatic mail from the Indian Foreign Ministry was recovered and passed on to the Indian embassy in Paris, which could be assigned to the flight and thus reappeared more than 46 years after the accident.
- In September 2013, a French climber found a small metal container engraved with Made in India on the glacier . This contained sapphires , rubies and emeralds worth several 100,000 euros, which had probably belonged to one of the passengers on Air India flight 101 and were intended for a recipient in London.
- On June 22, 2014, a French climber found a camera that belonged to one of the aircraft occupants. However, the film in the camera was too badly damaged to be able to develop photos from it.
- In July 2017, a French treasure hunter found a mummified hand and part of a thigh on the Glacier des Bossons .
Web links
- Final report on the incident on 24 January 1966 in the massif du Mont-Blanc au Boeing 707 immatriculé VT-DMN de la Compagnie Air India. (PDF; 6.8 MB) Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'aviation civile (BEA), March 9, 1967, accessed on September 28, 2013 (French, final report of the commission of inquiry into the accident).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Accident description. Retrieved September 28, 2013 .
- ^ The Air-India Disaster. (PDF) Flight International: 174, February 3, 1966, accessed on September 28, 2013 .
- ^ India diplomatic bag found in French Alps after 46 years. BBC News, August 30, 2013, accessed September 28, 2013 .
- ^ Find on Montblanc: Mountaineer finds valuable gemstones. (No longer available online.) Tagesschau.de, archived from the original on October 21, 2013 ; accessed on February 16, 2016 .
- ↑ Alpine climber finds 'India plane crash' jewels. BBC News, September 27, 2013, accessed September 28, 2013 .
- ↑ Mountaineer discovers mummy hand. 20 Minuten, July 29, 2017, accessed July 29, 2017 .