Air India Flight 101 (1966)

Air India Flight 101

An Air India Boeing 707 similar to the one involved
Accident
Date	24 January 1966
Summary	Controlled flight into terrain
Site	Mont Blanc massif, France
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Boeing 707–437
Aircraft name	Kanchenjunga
Operator	Air India
Registration	VT-DMN
Flight origin	Sahar International Airport, Bombay, 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 Bombay to London that accidentally flew into Mont Blanc in France on the morning of 24 January 1966. The accident was caused by a misunderstood verbal instruction from the radar controller to the pilot in lieu of VOR data, one of the receivers being out of service. The crash was almost at the exact spot where Air India Flight 245, a Lockheed 749 Constellation on a charter flight, had crashed in 1950 with the loss of all 48 on board that aircraft.^[1]

Accident

Air India Flight 101 was a scheduled flight from Bombay to London; and on the day of the accident was operated as a Boeing 707, registration VT-DMN and named Kanchenjunga.^[2] After leaving Bombay, it had made two scheduled stops, at Delhi and Beirut, and was en route to another stop at Geneva.^[2] At Flight Level 190, the crew was instructed to descend for Geneva International Airport after the aircraft had passed Mont Blanc.^[2] The pilot, thinking that he had passed Mont Blanc, started to descend and flew into the Mont Blanc massif in France near the Rochers de la Tournette, at an elevation of 4,750 metres (15,584 ft).^[2][1] All 106 passengers and 11 crew were killed.^[1][3]

Passengers

Among the 106 passengers who were killed was Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission^[1] There have been claims that the CIA was involved with the plane crash in an attempt to slow down India's development of a nuclear bomb.^[4]

Aircraft

The Boeing 707–437 VT-DMN had first flown on 5 April 1961 and was delivered new to Air India on 25 May 1961.^[5] It had flown a total of 16,188 hours.^[5]

Investigation

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.^[2][1]

The investigation concluded:^[2]

a) The pilot-in-command, who knew on leaving Beirut that one of the VORs was unserviceable, miscalculated his position in relation to Mont Blanc and reported his own estimate of this position to the controller; the radar controller noted the error, determined the position of the aircraft correctly and passed a communication to the aircraft which, he believed, would enable it to correct its position.

b) For want of a sufficiently precise phraseology, the correction was mis-understood by 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.

Recent discoveries

Wreckage of the crashed Boeing still remains at the crash site. In 2008, a climber found some Indian newspapers dated 23 January 1966. An engine from Air India Flight 245, which had crashed at virtually the same spot in 1950, was also discovered.

On 21 August 2012, a 9 kilograms (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.^[6][7] 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.^[8] 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.G.K. Menon.^[9] 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.^[10]

In September 2013 a French alpinist found a metal box containing the Air India logo at the site of the plane crash on Mont Blanc containing rubies, sapphires, and emeralds worth more than $300,000, which he handed in to the police to be returned to the rightful owners.^[11] In her book Crash au mont Blanc, which tells the story of the two Air India crashes on Mont-Blanc (1950 and 1966), Françoise Rey writes about a box of emeralds sent to M. Issacharov, London, described by Lloyd's.^[12]

On 22 June 2014 a camera belonging to one of the passengers was found in the Glacier des Bossons by another French alpinist. The film though present was too damaged to hope to retrieve pictures.

On 28 July 2017 human body parts, specifically the upper thigh of a woman and a hand were discovered beside an aircraft engine belonging to a Boeing 707 aircraft by Daniel Roche, who has spent years combing the Bossons Glacier on Mont Blanc for aircraft remains.^[13]

Flight number

While it is a custom to retire flight numbers after a fatal crash, Air India continues to use the AI101 flight designation, albeit on a different route and not for more than 40 years after this crash. Air India flights from Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and Delhi to London Heathrow now are separate non-stop flights, numbered 131 on the former outbound and 111 and 161 on the latter outbounds (none of the intermediate stops are serviced by Air India anymore), flown with a mix of Boeing 777-300ER and Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner equipment. Flight 101 would not be used again until 2008, when Air India introduced nonstop service to New York-JFK from Delhi, using the Boeing 777-300ER.^[14]

References

External links

• Final Report (Archive) – Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (in French)
• Cockburn, Barbara. "Air India 707 crash wreckage on Mont Blanc." Flight International. 24 January 2009.

Coordinates: 45°52′40″N 06°52′00″E / 45.87778°N 6.86667°E / 45.87778; 6.86667