4 days ago
Air India flight crashes in Ahmedabad: 28 years ago, another tragedy in the skies
The Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner's crash in Ahmedabad on Thursday has brought back memories of a similar tragedy that occurred 28 years and 7 months ago.
In the furthest reaches of India's aviation history, what comes close to this disastrous air crash is the Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision that claimed the lives of 345 people, including the crew.
On November 12, 1996, Saudia Flight 763, which had taken off from Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport and was en route to Dhahran in Saudi Arabia, collided with Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907, which was making its descent to Delhi after flying out of Chimkent in Kazakhstan.
No one on board either flight survived the crash.
The government set up a Court of Inquiry led by then Delhi High Court's Justice R C Lahoti. The Commission, which released its report the following year, determined that the cause of the crash was the Kazakh pilots' lack of understanding of instructions issued by the approach controller. It further attributed this lack of understanding to 'inadequate knowledge of the English language of the Kazak pilot' and 'casual attitude of the crew'.
What actually occurred in the airspace above the small hamlet in Haryana was pieced together in the days following the crash. According to a report in the New York Times, a day after the crash, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) provided a transcript of the black box recordings to establish a chronology of the crash.
On that fateful day, the approach controller had instructed the Saudi flight to ascend to 14,000 feet and maintain the level, whereas the descending flight en route from Chimkent was instructed to remain at 15,000 feet.
While both flights confirmed receiving the instructions, the approach controller had no way of ascertaining that they were following the instructions.
At the time, the Delhi airport only had a primary radar; controllers could only see on their screen the various aircraft present in the airspace without any information on altitude or speed.
Additionally, in those days at the Delhi airport, for both arriving and departing commercial jets, there was only a single corridor. The other corridors were reserved for the military. Which means, the Kazakh and Saudi jets were flying towards each other in the same air corridor from opposite directions.
This was why the approach controller had instructed the Kazakh crew to maintain 15,000 feet and the Saudi crew to maintain 14,000 feet to ensure the mandatory 1,000-feet separation between the jets when they crossed paths.
To be sure, the Lahoti Commission report concluded that the single air corridor did not contribute to the accident.
As the two flights approached each other, the Kazakh flight's radio operator noticed that the flight was flying below the instructed altitude and informed the pilot, who went full throttle to rise to the required altitude. As it ascended rapidly, it flew right below the Saudi aircraft and clipped the oncoming aircraft's left wing with its tail.
Both aircraft crashed.
A US Air Force cargo flight, which was also nearby, saw the entire collision occur and informed the approach controller. When the controller attempted to contact both flights, he received no response.
The Civil Aviation Aircraft Accident Summary for the year 1996 recorded that the Saudi aircraft fell near Dhani village in Bhiwani District of Haryana, and the Kazakh aircraft was lying near Birohar village in Rohtak District.
The New York Times reporter wrote the day after the crash, 'As he toured the Saudi crash site, Mr Deve Gowda seemed particularly affected by the scattered evidence of the passengers' role as breadwinners abroad. Many of those who died on the Saudi plane, including 215 Indians and 40 Nepalis, had jobs in Saudi Arabia. Although one of the bodies still lying in the wreckage when the Prime Minister arrived was that of an Indian doctor with his stethoscope still poking out of his charred jacket pocket, most of those on the plane were heading for jobs as drivers, cooks and housemaids.'
More poignantly, The Indian Express' reporter, Ashwini Sarin, wrote from the scene of the crash, 'But this, the record books say, is the third worst disaster in the history of aviation. And yet when I look up to where it all happened, the site of the accident, I see nothing. Just a few stars shivering high above… there are no survivors here, nobody to tell me what happened at that fateful moment, no one to tell the story.'
