Air India Flight 855
VT-EBD Emperor Ashoka two years before the accident
|
|
| Accident summary | |
|---|---|
| Date | 1 January 1978 |
| Summary | Instrument malfunction, spatial disorientation |
| Site | Arabian Sea, near Bombay, India |
| Passengers | 190 |
| Crew | 23 |
| Fatalities | 213 (all) |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 747-237B |
| Aircraft name | Emperor Ashoka |
| Operator | Air India |
| Registration | VT-EBD |
| Flight origin |
Sahar International Airport Bombay, India |
| Destination |
Dubai International Airport Dubai, United Arab Emirates |
Air India Flight 855 was a scheduled passenger flight that crashed during the evening of New Year's Day 1978 about 3 km (1.9 mi) off the coast of Bandra, Bombay. All 213 passengers and crew on board were killed. The crash is believed to have been caused by the captain having become spatially disoriented after the failure of one of the flight instruments in the cockpit. It was the deadliest aviation accident in India until the Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision in 1996, and is still the second-deadliest behind the latter accident.
The aircraft involved was a Boeing 747-237B, registration VT-EBD, named Emperor Ashoka. It was the first 747 delivered to Air India, in April 1971.
The departure was from Bombay's Sahar Airport, (now called Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport). The destination was Dubai International Airport in Dubai.
Approximately one minute after takeoff from runway 27, Captain M.L. Kukar made a scheduled right turn upon crossing the Bombay coastline over the Arabian Sea, after which the aircraft briefly returned to a normal level position. Soon it began rolling to the left, and never regained level flight.
The cockpit voice recorder recovered from the wreckage revealed the captain made a verbal comment about his Attitude indicator (AI) having "toppled", meaning that it was still showing the aircraft in a right bank. The first officer, whose presumably functional AI was now showing a left bank, said that his AI was also toppled, but there is some belief that the Captain mistakenly took this to mean that both primary AIs were indicating a right bank. It was after sunset and the aircraft was flying over a dark Arabian Sea, leaving the aircrew unable to visually cross-check their AI instrument readings with the actual horizon outside the cockpit windows.
...
Wikipedia