Alliance Air Flight 7412

Alliance Air Flight 7412

An Alliance Air Boeing 737-2A8 similar to the one involved in the crash
Accident summary
Date	17 July 2000
Summary	Pilot violating approach procedure which leads to loss of control
Site	Patna, Bihar, India
Passengers	52
Crew	6
Fatalities	60 (5 on ground)
Injuries (non-fatal)	8 (5 on ground)
Survivors	3 (initially 7)
Aircraft type	Boeing 737-2A8
Operator	Alliance Air
Registration	VT-EGD
Flight origin	Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata, India
Stopover	Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Airport, Patna, India
Last stopover	Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport, Lucknow, India
Destination	Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi, India

Alliance Air Flight 7412 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight operated by Alliance Air, a subsidiary of the airline Indian, from Kolkata's Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport to Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi. On 17 July 2000, while on approach to its first stopover in Patna, the Boeing 737-2A8 nose-dived and crashed into a residential area in Patna, killing 60 people including 5 people on the ground.

The final report, investigated by the Indian AAIB (Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau), concluded that the cause of the crash was due to pilot error. Initially, the Bihar Air Traffic Controller was blamed as the cause of the accident. Even after the official final report was published, most residents live near the crash site and the relatives of those who perished on the flight believed that ATC error was the cause of the accident.

The plane crash was the deadliest plane crash in year 2000 in India, and remained as the deadliest crash in India for nearly a decade until Air India Express Flight 812 which crashed in Mangalore on 12 May 2010, killing 158 people. Subsequently, it was the 26th worst accident involving a Boeing 737-200 and the 13th deadliest plane crash in India.

Flight 7412 departed Calcutta (Kolkata) at 06:51 on July 17, 2000, for a flight to Delhi, with stops at Patna and Lucknow. Patna ATC asked the aircraft at 07:17 to report for descent and also to check descent traffic with Kolkata Area Control. The aircraft soon responded that Kolkata had reported negative traffic. Flight 7412 was then cleared for descent to FL75 and asked to report 25 NM and the same was reported by the aircraft at 07:26. Flight 7412 was cleared to descend to 4000 ft. and was asked to report for approach runway 25.