Air India Flight 855 was a scheduled passenger flight from Santa Cruz Airport, Bombay to Dubai International Airport, Dubai. On New Years Day in 1978, the Boeing 747 operating the flight crashed about off the coast of

Bandra Bandra ( æːɳɖɾa also known as Vandre ( �aːn̪d̪ɾe is an upscale coastal suburb located in Mumbai (Bombay) area of the Konkan division, Maharashtra, India. The suburb is located to the immediate north of River Mithi, which separates B ...

, Bombay (now

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...

). All 213 passengers and crew on board were killed. An investigation into the crash determined the most likely probable cause was the captain becoming spatially disoriented after the failure of one of the

flight instruments Flight instruments are the instruments in the cockpit of an aircraft that provide the pilot with data about the flight situation of that aircraft, such as altitude, airspeed, vertical speed, heading and much more other crucial information in f ...

in the cockpit. It was Air India's deadliest aircraft crash until the bombing of Flight 182 in 1985. It was also the deadliest aviation accident in India until the

Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision On 12 November 1996, Saudia Flight 763, a Boeing 747 en route from Delhi, India, to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907, an Ilyushin Il-76 en route from Chimkent, Kazakhstan, to Delhi, collided over the village of Charkh ...

in 1996. , Flight 855 is still the second deadliest aircraft crash in both of these categories.

Aircraft and crew

The aircraft involved was a Boeing 747-237B,The aircraft was a Boeing 747-200B model; Boeing assigns a unique code for each company that buys one of its aircraft, which is applied as an

infix An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with '' adfix,'' a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix. When marking text for i ...

to the model number at the time the aircraft is built, hence "747-237B" for a Boeing 747-200B built for Air India.

registration Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), th ...

named ''

Emperor Ashoka Ashoka (, ; also ''Asoka''; 304 – 232 BCE), popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was the third emperor of the Maurya Empire of Indian subcontinent during to 232 BCE. His empire covered a large part of the Indian subcontinent, ...

''. It was the first 747 delivered to

Air India Air India is the flag carrier airline of India, headquartered at New Delhi. It is owned by Talace Private Limited, a Special-Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of Tata Sons, after Air India Limited's former owner, the Government of India, completed the ...

, in April 1971. The flight crew consisted of the following persons: * The

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

was 51-year old Madan Lal Kukar. He had joined Air India in 1956, and was experienced, having almost 18,000 flight hours. * The first officer was 43-year-old Indu Virmani, a former

Indian Air Force The Indian Air Force (IAF) is the air force, air arm of the Indian Armed Forces. Its complement of personnel and aircraft assets ranks third amongst the air forces of the world. Its primary mission is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct ...

commander who joined Air India in 1976. He had more than 4,500 flight hours. * The

flight engineer A flight engineer (FE), also sometimes called an air engineer, is the member of an aircraft's flight crew who monitors and operates its complex aircraft systems. In the early era of aviation, the position was sometimes referred to as the "air m ...

was 53-year-old Alfredo Faria, who joined Air India in 1955 and had 11,000 flight hours, making him one of Air India's most senior flight engineers at the time of the accident.

Sequence of events

The aircraft departed from Bombay's Santa Cruz Airport (later Sahar Airport, now called

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport is an international airport serving Mumbai and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). It is the second busiest airport in the country in terms of total and international passenger traffic a ...

). The destination was

Dubai International Airport Dubai International Airport ( ar, مطار دبي الدولي) is the primary international airport serving Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic. It is also the nineteenth-busies ...

Dubai Dubai (, ; ar, wikt:دبي, دبي, translit=Dubayy, , ) is the List of cities in the United Arab Emirates#Major cities, most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, the most populated of the 7 ...

. Approximately one minute after takeoff from runway 27, Captain Kukar made a scheduled right turn upon crossing the Bombay coastline over the

Arabian Sea The Arabian Sea ( ar, اَلْبَحرْ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Bahr al-ˁArabī) is a region of the northern Indian Ocean bounded on the north by Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channe ...

, 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 A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to as a "black box", an outdated name which has ...

recovered from the wreckage revealed that Captain Kukar was the first to notice a problem, when he said, "What's happened here, my instruments ..." The captain was explaining that his

attitude indicator The attitude indicator (AI), formerly known as the gyro horizon or artificial horizon, is a flight instrument that informs the pilot of the aircraft orientation relative to Earth's horizon, and gives an immediate indication of the smallest o ...

(AI) had "toppled", meaning that it was still showing the aircraft in a right bank. First Officer Virmani, whose presumably functional AI was now showing a left bank (and not noticing the captain's concern), said, "Mine has also toppled, looks fine." It is believed that the Captain mistakenly took this to mean that both primary AIs were indicating a right bank, in effect confirming what he believed he was seeing. 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. The Boeing 747 had a third backup AI in the center instrument panel between the two pilots, and the transcripts of the cockpit conversation showed Flight Engineer Faria telling the captain, "Don't go by that one, don't go by that one..." trying to direct his attention towards that third AI, or perhaps to another instrument called the

turn and bank indicator In aviation, the turn and slip indicator (T/S, a.k.a. turn and bank indicator) and the turn coordinator (TC) variant are essentially two aircraft flight instruments in one device. One indicates the rate of turn, or the rate of change in the aircr ...

, just five seconds before the aircraft impacted the sea. The captain's mistaken perception of the aircraft's attitude resulted in him using the

aircraft flight control system A conventional fixed-wing aircraft flight control system consists of flight control surfaces, the respective cockpit controls, connecting linkages, and the necessary operating mechanisms to control an aircraft's direction in flight. Aircraft ...

to add more left bank and left rudder, causing the Boeing 747 to roll further left into a bank of 108 degrees and rapidly lose altitude. Just 101 seconds after leaving the runway, the jet hit the Arabian Sea at an estimated 35-degree nose-down angle. There were no survivors among the 190 passengers and 23 crew members.

Probable cause

The partially recovered wreckage revealed no evidence of explosion, fire, or any electrical or mechanical failure; and an initial theory of sabotage was ruled out. The investigation concluded that the probable cause was "due to the irrational control inputs by the captain following complete unawareness of the attitude as his AI had malfunctioned. The crew failed to gain control based on the other flight instruments." US Federal District Judge James M. Fitzgerald, in a 139-page decision issued 1 November 1985, rejected charges of negligence against the

Boeing Company The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...

Lear Siegler Lear Siegler Incorporated (LSI) is a diverse American corporation established in 1962. Its products range from car seats and brakes to weapons control systems for military fighter planes. The company's more than $2 billion-a-year annual sales come ...

Inc, the manufacturer of the attitude director indicator, and the Collins Radio division of Rockwell International, which manufactured the backup system in a suit related to the crash. Steven C. Marshall, the attorney for Boeing asserted that the crash had been caused by Captain Madan Kukar, who he said was "flying illegally under the influence of diabetic drugs, a condition compounded by his alcoholic intake and dieting in the 24 hours before the flight," and not due to equipment malfunctions. The suit was dismissed in 1986.

Notes

References

External links

*
Design Induced Errors
which includes a discussion of the crash.

Pre-crash photos of 747 VT-EBD at airliners.net
{{Air India Airliner accidents and incidents caused by instrument failure Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error Aviation accidents and incidents in India Aviation accidents and incidents in 1978 Accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 747

855 __NOTOC__ Year 855 ( DCCCLV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * November 20 – Theoktistos, co-regent of the Empire on behalf of ...

1978 in India History of Mumbai (1947–present)