Accident | |
---|---|
Date | 24 January 1966 |
Summary | Controlled flight into terrain |
Site | Mont Blanc massif, France 45°52′40″N06°52′00″E / 45.87778°N 6.86667°E |
Aircraft | |
Aircraft type | Boeing 707–437 |
Aircraft name | Kanchenjunga |
Operator | Air India |
Registration | VT-DMN |
Flight origin | Sahar International Airport, Mumbai, India |
1st stopover | Delhi International Airport, New Delhi, India |
2nd stopover | Beirut International Airport, Beirut, Lebanon |
Last stopover | Geneva International Airport, Geneva, Switzerland |
Destination | Heathrow Airport, London, United Kingdom |
Passengers | 106 |
Crew | 11 |
Fatalities | 117 |
Survivors | 0 |
Air India Flight 101 was a scheduled Air India passenger flight from Mumbai to London, via Delhi, Beirut, and Geneva. On the morning of 24 January 1966 at 8:02 CET, on approach to Geneva, the Boeing 707-437 operating the flight accidentally flew and crashed into Mont Blanc in France, killing all 117 people on board. Among the victims was Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the founder and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India.
The crash occurred just a few hundred feet away from where an Air India Lockheed 749 Constellation operating as Air India Flight 245 while on a charter flight, had crashed in 1950. [1]
The Boeing 707–437 VT-DMN had first flown on 5 April 1961 and was delivered new to Air India on 25 May 1961. [2] It had flown a total of 16,188 hours. [2] It was named Kanchenjunga , after the third highest mountain in the world.
Air India Flight 101 was a scheduled flight from Mumbai to London; and on the day of the accident was operated by a Boeing 707, registration VT-DMN and named Kanchenjunga. [3] The Pilot-In-Command was an 18-year veteran, Captain Joe T. D'Souza. [4] After leaving Mumbai, it had made two scheduled stops, at Delhi and Beirut, and was en route to another stop at Geneva. [3] At flight level 190 (19,000 feet; 5,800 m), the crew was instructed to descend for Geneva International Airport after the aircraft had passed Mont Blanc. [3] The pilot, thinking that he had passed Mont Blanc, started to descend and flew into the Mont Blanc massif in France near the Rocher de la Tournette, at an elevation of 4,750 metres (15,584 ft). [3] [5] All 106 passengers and 11 crew were killed. [5] [1]
Among the 117 passengers who died was Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the founder and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India. [5]
At the time, aircrew fixed the position of their aircraft as being above Mont Blanc by taking a cross-bearing from one VHF omnidirectional range (VOR) as they flew along a track from another VOR. However, the accident aircraft departed Beirut with one of its VOR receivers unserviceable. [3] [5]
The investigation concluded: [3]
a) The pilot-in-command calculated his position in relation to Mont Blanc and reported his own estimate of this position to the controller; the radar controller noted a different position of the aircraft and passed a communication to the aircraft which would enable it to change its position.
b) The pilot who, under the mistaken impression that he had passed the ridge leading to the summit and was still at a flight level which afforded sufficient safety clearance over the top of Mont Blanc, continued his descent.
Much of the wreckage of the crashed Boeing still remains at the crash site. In 2008, a climber found some Indian newspapers dated 23 January 1966. [6] An engine from Air India Flight 245, which had crashed at virtually the same spot sixteen years earlier in 1950, was also discovered.
On 21 August 2012, a 9-kilogram (20 lb) jute bag of diplomatic mail, stamped "On Indian Government Service, Diplomatic Mail, Ministry of External Affairs", was recovered by a mountain rescue worker and turned over to local police in Chamonix. [7] [8] An official with the Indian Embassy in Paris took custody of the mailbag, which was found to be a "Type C" diplomatic pouch meant for newspapers, periodicals, and personal letters. Indian diplomatic pouches "Type A" (classified information) and "Type B" (official communications) are still in use today; "Type C" mailbags were made obsolete with the advent of the Internet. [9] The mailbag was found to contain, among other items, still-white and legible copies of The Hindu and The Statesman from mid-January 1966, Air India calendars, and a personal letter to the Indian consul-general in New York, C.J.K. Menon. [10] The bag was flown back to New Delhi on a regular Air India flight, in the charge of C.R. Barooah, the flight purser. His father, R.C. Barooah, was the flight engineer on Air India Flight 101. [11] [12]
In September 2013, a French alpinist found a metal box marked with the Air India logo at the site of the plane crash on Mont Blanc containing rubies, sapphires and emeralds, valued at over €245,000, which he handed in to the police to be returned to the rightful owners. [6] [13] As no rightful owners were found, however, in December 2021, the gems were divided up equally between the alpinist and the Chamonix commune: each receiving an amount of stones equivalent to €75,000. [14] As part of her research for her book Crash au Mont-Blanc, which tells the story of the two Air India crashes on the mountain, Françoise Rey found a record of a box of emeralds sent to a man named Issacharov in London, described by Lloyd's. [6] On 11 October 2023, the part belonging to the alpinist was sold at an auction in Chambéry for €25,000. [15]
In 2017, Daniel Roche, a Swiss climber who has searched the Bossons Glacier for wreckage from Air India Flights 245 and 101, found human remains and wreckage including a Boeing 707 aircraft engine. [16] In July 2020, as a result of melting of the glacier, Indian newspapers from 1966 were found in good condition. [17]
Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in the Alps and Western Europe, and the highest mountain in Europe outside the Caucasus mountains, rising 4,805.59 m (15,766 ft) above sea level, located on the French-Italian border. It is the second-most prominent mountain in Europe, after Mount Elbrus, and the 11th most prominent mountain in the world.
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, more commonly known simply as Chamonix (Chamôni), is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in Southeastern France. It was the site of the first Winter Olympics, held in 1924.
Events in the year 1966 in the Republic of India.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1966.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha, FNI, FASc, FRS, Hon.FRSE was an Indian nuclear physicist who is widely credited as the "father of the Indian nuclear programme". He was the founding director and professor of physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), as well as the founding director of the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) which was renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in his honour. TIFR and AEET served as the cornerstone of the Indian nuclear energy and weapons programme. He was the first chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission and secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy. By supporting space science projects which initially derived their funding from the AEC, he played an important role in the birth of the Indian space programme.
The Mont Blanc massif is a mountain range in the Alps, located mostly in France and Italy, but also straddling Switzerland at its northeastern end. It contains eleven major independent summits, each over 4,000 metres (13,123 ft) in height. It is named after Mont Blanc, the highest point in western Europe and the European Union. Because of its considerable overall altitude, a large proportion of the massif is covered by glaciers, which include the Mer de Glace and the Miage Glacier – the longest glaciers in France and Italy, respectively.
BOAC Flight 911 was a round-the-world flight operated by the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) that crashed near Mount Fuji in Japan on 5 March 1966, with the loss of all 113 passengers and 11 crew members. The Boeing 707 jetliner involved disintegrated mid-air shortly after departing from Tokyo, as a result of severe clear-air turbulence.
Air France Flight 007 crashed on 3 June 1962 while on take-off from Orly Airport. The only survivors of the disaster were two flight attendants; the other eight crew members, and all 122 passengers on board the Boeing 707, were killed. The crash was at the time the worst single-aircraft disaster and the deadliest crash involving a Boeing 707. It was also the first single civilian jet airliner disaster with more than 100 deaths.
The Aiguille du Dru is a mountain in the Mont Blanc massif in the French Alps. It is situated to the east of the village of Les Praz in the Chamonix valley. "Aiguille" means "needle" in French.
Pan Am Flight 816 was an international flight from Auckland, New Zealand, to San Francisco, California, via Tahiti, French Polynesia, and Los Angeles, California. It was operated by a Pan Am Boeing 707-321B bearing the registration N417PA and named Clipper Winged Racer. On July 22, 1973, at 10:06 P.M. local time, the Boeing 707 took off from Faa'a International Airport in Papeete. Thirty seconds after takeoff, the airliner, carrying 79 passengers and crew, crashed into the sea. All occupants except 1 passenger were killed.
Below is a list of speculated CIA activities in India.
Pan Am Flight 812 (PA812), operated by a Pan American World Airways Boeing 707-321B registered N446PA and named Clipper Climax, was a scheduled international flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, California, with intermediate stops at Denpasar, Sydney, Nadi, and Honolulu. The airplane briefly appeared in the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie in 1971. On April 22, 1974, it crashed into rough mountainous terrain while preparing for a runway 09 approach to Denpasar after a 4-hour 20-minute flight from Hong Kong. All 107 people on board perished. The location of the accident was about 42.5 nautical miles northwest of Ngurah Rai International Airport. Until the 1991 Jakarta Indonesian Air Force C-130 crash, it was the deadliest aviation accident to happen on Indonesian soil.
Air India Flight 245 was a scheduled Air India passenger flight from Bombay to London via Cairo and Geneva. On the morning of 3 November 1950, the Lockheed L-749A Constellation serving the flight crashed into Mont Blanc, France, while approaching Geneva. All 48 aboard were killed.
Malabar Princess is a 2004 French film directed by Gilles Legrand. The film is about a young boy called Tom, who is sent to live with his grandfather in the French Alps after his mother disappeared during an excursion with her husband, Pierre, in the French Alps. He becomes friends with Benoît, a boy about his age. While searching for Tom's mother they come across the remains of a plane that had crashed during the 1950s.
Japan Air Lines Flight 472 was a flight from London to Tokyo via Frankfurt, Rome, Beirut, Tehran, Bombay, Bangkok and Hong Kong. On September 24, 1972, the flight landed at Juhu Aerodrome near Bombay, India instead of the city's much larger Santacruz Airport and overran the runway, resulting in the aircraft being written off after being damaged beyond economic repair.
On August 3, 1975, Royal Air Maroc chartered a Boeing 707 passenger flight from Le Bourget Airport in Paris to Inezgane Airport in Agadir which crashed into a mountain on approach to Agadir Inezgane Airport, Morocco. All 188 passengers and crew on board were killed. It is the deadliest aviation disaster involving a Boeing 707, as well as the deadliest in Morocco.
Air India is the flag carrier airline of India. It is owned by Air India Limited, a Tata Group enterprise and operates a fleet of Airbus and Boeing aircraft serving 102 domestic and international destinations. It is headquartered in Gurgaon. The airline has its main hub at Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi and secondary hub at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Mumbai alongside several focus cities across India. As of July 2023, the airline is the second-largest airline in India in terms of passengers carried, after IndiGo. Air India became the 27th member of Star Alliance on 11 July 2014.
Varig Flight 967 was an international cargo flight from Narita International Airport in Japan to Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport in Brazil, with a stopover at Los Angeles International Airport in the United States. On 30 January 1979, the Boeing 707-323C serving the flight disappeared while en route. Neither the aircraft nor its six crew members have ever been found.
The Rocher de la Tournette is a prominent rocky point on the icy summit ridge of Mont Blanc between the Petite Bosse and the summit. The highest point lies at 4,677 metres (15,344 ft) above sea level, and can be most easily reached on an ascent of Mont Blanc via the Goûter Route.