Commemoration service to mark 40th anniversary of Air India disaster taking place in West Cork
In June 1985, Air India Flight 182 was brought down off the coast of Cork in what was the worst aviation disaster in Irish and Canadian history.
Some 329 people were killed, including 29 families, the majority of whom were Canadians of Indian descent.
The plane crashed as a result of a terrorist attack, and was the worst aviation act of terrorism until the 11 September attacks.
An annual commemoration is held at the Ahakista Memorial in Cork.
At the 20th commemoration of the disaster, Paul Martin became the first Canadian prime minister to visit the memorial.
On RTÉ's Morning Ireland this morning, retired Irish Navy captain James Robinson spoke about how he and his crew helped to recover some of the bodies from the scene.
He told the programme that they were working close to Co Kerry at 8am that morning when they picked up a radio message from Valentia Island that an aircraft had disappeared from radar screens.
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The memorial commemorating the Air India disaster in Ahakista, West Cork.
Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
'We straight away, headed towards the scene, not knowing at the time, as we went out there what nature of tragedy had taken place,' Robinson said.
He said in the couple of hours it took them to reach the scene, they were preparing to rescue survivors.
'We were taking blankets out of the stores. I recall soup was being put on the stove in the galley, to warm people up. When we got to the scene, we very quickly became aware that we were in the business of recovering bodies and wreckage.'
Robinson, who is attending the commemoration this morning, said he and his crew did not feel the impact of what had taken place right away as 'we had a job to do'.
It was subsequently that the enormity of what had taken place dawned on us. There was a lot of anger that this devastation could be wrought on so many innocent civilians.
'But also, I felt very great pride in my crew. They were young Irish people who did a remarkable job and asked for nothing in return.'
When Taoiseach Micheál Martin offered his condolences to the families of those killed after an Air India plane crashed earlier this month, he drew comparisons between the two tragedies.
'All of us who experienced that had a sense of trauma that people go through when crashes of this kind happen,' he said.
The 2025 Air India flight struck a medical college hostel in a residential part of Ahmedabad, killing 241 of the 242 people on board.
The sole survivor was Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, who said it was 'a miracle' he survived.
With reporting from Press Assocation
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