Air India Flight 855
| Air India Flight 855 | |
|---|---|
 The Emperor Ashoka at Paris-Orly Airport on January 1, 1976, two years before the accident |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Loss of control through disorientation after instrument errors |
| place | 3 km off the coast of Bandra, Bombay |
| date | January 1, 1978 |
| Fatalities | 213 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 747-200 |
| operator | Air India |
| Mark | VT-EBD |
| Surname | Emperor Ashoka |
| Departure airport | Bombay-Santacruz Airport |
| Destination airport | Dubai airport |
| Passengers | 190 |
| crew | 23 |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
On January 1, 1978, a Boeing 747-200 crashed on Air India flight 855 ( flight number : AI855) shortly after take-off from the Indian airport of Bombay as a result of an instrument failure and the resulting spatial disorientation of the pilots. The plane hit the Arabian Sea three kilometers from the coast . All 213 occupants were killed in the accident.
the accident
Air India's Boeing 747 ( registration number : VT-EBD) took off at 8:40 p.m. local time in the dark from runway 27 at Bombay Airport for a scheduled flight to Dubai . The crew had received clearance from the air traffic controller in the tower to climb to 2,440 meters (8,000 feet ) and at the same time had been instructed to report to departure control that an altitude of 730 meters (2,400 feet) had been reached. About a minute after take-off, the aircraft turned into a slight right-hand bend in accordance with the departure procedure and flew over the coastline.
Shortly afterwards, the Boeing 747 completed the right turn and began to turn into an unplanned left turn, in the course of which its bank angle increased continuously. When the aircraft finally banked 108 degrees at about 460 meters (1500 feet ) , it tilted over the left wing . The machine went into an uncontrolled dive and hit the coast on its left side with a negative pitch of 40 degrees. The water depth at the site of the accident was 10 meters.
Cause of accident
By evaluating the voice recorder and examining the recovered cockpit instruments, it was found that the captain's artificial horizon ( Attitude Direction Indicator , ADI) was defective, so that the device remained in a fixed position during the flown right turn. When the master steered to the left with the ailerons to end the turn , his ADI continued to show a right bank angle. He kept the left rudder deflection so that, in contrast to the representation in the artificial horizon, the machine turned into a left turn.
A brief comment from the captain ( "What's happened here, my instrument ..." ) seemed to indicate that he had doubts about the function of his device. His imprecise utterance, however, did not cause the co-pilot to worry. He only just announced that his ADI would work without giving any further information or reacting to the increasing tendency to the left. The master failed to request specific information from the co-pilot about the display of the flight situation on his ADI. The master also did not use the third artificial horizon to check the display of his ADI. This third device was located centrally between the pilots' seats.
When the aircraft had reached a bank angle of 40 degrees, the flight engineer noticed that different flight attitudes were displayed in the third artificial horizon and in the master's ATI. He tried to make it clear to the captain not to trust the ADI display ( "Don't go by that one, don't go by that one." ). However, the master, who was probably spatially disoriented at the time, did not react quickly enough to the warning, as a result of which the aircraft entered an uncontrollable flight condition only five seconds later.
Similar aviation accidents
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d e David Gero: Aviation disasters - accidents with passenger aircraft since 1950 , Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 978-3-613-01580-7
- ↑ a b c d e Air India, Boeing 747-200, VT-EBD, January 1, 1978. In: Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved January 12, 2017 .
Coordinates: 19 ° 4 ′ 45 ″ N , 72 ° 47 ′ 49 ″ E