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| Special
Report: Air India Flight 182 |
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| Investigators examine the wreckage of Air India Flight 182. |
Air India's Boeing 747 'Kanishka,' named after Emperor
Kanishka who ruled an Indian state in the second century, cruised over the
Atlantic at 31,000ft as it flew towards London, Heathrow. The aircraft,
registration VT-EFO, was operating Flight 182 on the east bound journey on
a trip between India and Canada. Flight 181 from India had transitted Frankfurt
when travelling westbound to Toronto, then had doubled back to Montreal.
There the flight number had changed to Flight AI182 for the return trip to
London, New Delhi and Bombay. On Flight 181`s Toronto to Montreal sector,
therefore, some passengers were inbound to Montreal from India while others
were outbound from Toronto on the way to India.
Air India's Canadian flight was a weekly service,
and the present crew of 22, under the command of Captain Hanse Singh Narenda,
had spent a pleasant six day stopover in Toronto before boarding the aircraft.
The co-pilot was Satninder Singh Bhinder, also a Captain but on this flight
sitting in the right hand seat, and the flight engineer was Dara Dumasia,
about to retire and completing his last trip. The 19 flight attendants of
Captain Narendra`s crew were under the charge of Sampath Lazer. A large
expadriate Indian community had settled in Canada and Flight 182 was over
three quarters full with 307 passengers who were mostly returning on a visit
to India to their adopted country. The large crew onboard the aircraft brought
the total onboard to 329 people.. The time was now 0.600hrs GMT on Sunday
23rd June, 1985, about 2½ hours from landing, and the aircraft
was estimated to land at Heathrow at 08.33 hrs. The Air India flight was
running about 1¾ hours late because of the time taken in Toronto
to fit "fifth pod", or spare engine. On 8th June an Air India aircraft had
suffered an engine failure on take-off and had landed back at Toronto where
an Air Canada engine was borrowed for the homeward journey. The engine had
been returned one week later and Kanishka now flew back with the broken engine
for repair in India. The carriage of a spare engine, which is fitted below
the left wing between the inboard engine and the fuselage, is more commonplace
than most passengers realise, and is a convenient way of transporting such
a bulky item. The engine is shrouded with fairings to reduce drag and slight
trim adjustments are made to maintain balanced flight.. A maximum indicated
airspeed is imposed with the carriage of a fifth engine, but otherwise flying
characteristics are normal. Captain Narendra had requested a reduced cruising
Mach number of 0.81 on the North Atlantic track for the purposes of Flight
182, instead of the normal 0.84 Mach cruise, to comply with the restricted
speed.
The flight from Montreal to London was just over
6 hours, and at the beginning of the journey the passengers were served with
a hot meal and drinks. For those who could remain awake a Hindi movie was
showing, but most dozed quietly in the smooth flying condtions. Outside the
air temperature was 47 below zero. In the cockpit, the flight crew looked
out over a clear sky, and as the sun peeked it`s head above the eastern horizon,
some low lying cloud could be seen far below. Apart from the delay over fitting
the broken engine, all was normal and routine.
Six thousand miles away on the other side of
the world, and in another time zone, ground staff at Tokyo`s Narita Airport
unloaded baggage containers from Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 003which
had recently arrived from Vancouver. With good winds on the trip the 747
made up some time and had landed 10mins ahead of schedule at 14.15 hrs local
Japanese time. Trucks ferried containers to the ground floor of the terminal
and luggage handlers removed the bags for passenger collection. The scene
was typical of a busy international airport, but it was not to remain so
for long. As bags were being unloaded from a container, one piece of luggage
exploded causing a blast which shook the whole airport. a hole was blown
in the concrete floor, and the unloading area was extensively damaged. Two
Japanese airport staff were killed and another four seriously injured. CP
Air's 747, Flight 003 from Vancouver, had arrived with a total of 390 people
onboard, and had the aircraft been just half an hour late, there would have
been a terrible disaster. There was no doubt that the force of the blast
was sufficient to cause the destruction to something even as large as a
747.
Over the Atlantic, Air India Flight 182 continued
on its way to London, blissfully unaware of the events unfolding. All airlines,
of course, are subject to the threat of sabotage, although some more than
others, but most have implemented careful checks to safeguard against such
a happening. Air India was no exception. Internal strife in the northern
State of Punjab, brought about by extremist demands for a separate nation
of Khalistan, had created civil unrest in India. The trouble came to a head
in June 1984 in Arnritsar with the Indian Army's storming of the Golden Temple,
the Sikhs' holiest of shrines. The result was a bloodbath. Sikhs throughout
the world were horrified by such an act. In retaliation, the Indian prime
minister, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards. Her
death stunned the world and created a Hindu backlash, which resulted in Sikhs
being massacred in the streets of New Delhi. Mrs Gandhi's successor as prime
minister, her son Rajiv Gandhi, was no less at risk. Ona planned visit to
Washington earlier in the summer of 1985 the FBI had foiled an
assassination plot by Sikh terrorists. Two suspects
wanted for questioning, Lal Singh and Ammand Singh, escaped capture. The
proliferation of the name Singh, meaning 'the Lion', may have compounded
the problems of detection, for all male Sikhs carry the name. As a result
of the struggle in India, the Indian Government was not short of enemies
and Sikh extremists posed a specific threat. Air India, as a long arm of
the nation, was particularly vulnerable to terrorist attacks and was fully
aware of the risks. Canada and the UK both contained the largest concentration
of Sikhs outside India, and were subject to
special precautions. Air India had implemented a security
system which appeared effective, and passengers boarding Flights 181/2 in
both Toronto and Montreal underwent strict security measures. Air India employed
the services of local security companies who, together with the airline's
own agents and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), subjected the passengers
to a double security check. Metal detectors were used to screen for weapons
and all hand baggage was searched. Suitcases were individually X-rayed and
where suspicious items were uncovered a portable bomb 'sniffer' could be
used to detect explosives. Three bags containing doubtful packages had been
left behind in Montreal: later inspection revealed them to be safe. Only
an iron, a radio and a hair dryer were found. Air Canada, as Air India's
handling agent, used a recommended passenger numbering system which ensured
that all who had checked in boarded the aircraft. The security system implemented
by the Indian airline seemed a reasonable and adequate response to the
risks.
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| (File Photo) |
At 07.05hrs GMT, Air India Flight 182 passed
track position 50°N 15°W, and relayed the information to Shannon.
The aircraft was just within VHP radio range and the position report was
transmitted to control on 13;5.6 MHz, a frequency which had been previously
assigned on HF radio. The frequency, in fact, had been incorrectly allocated
and AI182 was now instructed to call Shannon on 131.15MHz. On frequency
diangeover a stream of calls could be heard but eventually at 07.08:28hrs,
Captain Bhinder, acting as co-pilot, established contact.
Capt Bhinder R/T: 'Air India 182, good
morning.'
Shannon Control R/T: 'Air India
182, good morning. Squawk two zero zero five, and go ahead please.'
Capt Bhinder R/T; 'Three zero zero five
squawking, and Air India is five one north one five west at zero seven zero
five, level three one zero, estimate FIR (Flight Information Region) five
one north zero eight west at zero seven three five, and Bunty next.'
Shannon Control R/T: 'Air India,
Shannon, Roger. Cleared London via five one north zero eight west, Bunty,
upper blue 40 to Merley, upper red 37 to Ibsley, flight level three one
zero.'
Captain Bhinder repeated the instruction then
Shannon replied correcting the earlier mistake and confirming the squawk
of 2005.
Capt Bhinder R/T: 'Right, Sir" Squawking
two zero zero five, 182.'
The time was now 07.10hrs and, with fair westerly
winds, Kanishka flew on at a ground speed of 519kt, heading (198° magnetic
towards the next position of 51°N 08°W, which lay about 50 miles
south of Cork in the Irish Republic. Flight 182's routeing then proceeded
up the mouth of the Bristol Channel, on across the West Country to the VOR
radio beacon at Ibsley, and from there it would continue on to London.
On the flight deck the discussion centred around
the flight purser's requirement for bar seals to lock bars in keeping with
customs regulations. F/E Dumasia asked Captain Bhinder to radio ahead to
London operations with the request. Meanwhile, in the Shannon Air Traffic
Control Centre (ATCC), controllers M. Quinn and T. Lane monitored Air India's
progress, together with other aircraft in the vicinity.
Momentarily a clicking sound of a transit button
came over their headsets and, as they watched the screen, the Air India radar
return suddenly vanished. The time was 07.14;01hrs GMT. Unknown to the
controllers, Flight 182 had disintegrated in mid-air. The tail section aft
of the wings broke off, and as the aircraft plummeted towards the ocean the
wings and engines detached and fell in a shower of twisted metal into the
sea. In a moment Kanishka was gone. There was no warning and no `May day'
call: Flight 182 simply disappeared. With contact lost the controllers, alarmed
by the circumstances, requested other flights to call Air India, but to no
avail. By 07.30hrs it became obvious that the problem was serious and an
emergency was declared. The emergency services were mobilised and shipping
in the "area of 51°N 15°W was alerted. The Irish Navy vessel, Le
Aisling, with cargo ships in the region, among them the Laurentian Forest,
Ali Baba, Kongsteift and West Atlantic, converged on the location of the
crash. By 09.13hrs a radio report from the Laurentian Forest confirmed the
worst fears as wreckage and bodies were found floating on the surface. There
were no survivors; all 329 people aboard had perished. The accident proved
to be the worst aviation disaster over sea, and at the time the third worst
disaster in aviation history.
An accident co-ordination centre was set up in
Cork and floating wreckage and bodies recovered from the sea were taken to
the Irish port. In the days that followed the accident, about 50% of the
aircraft's total structure was retrieved from the sea's surface and 131 victims
of the crash were brought ashore. A team of pathologists was organised to
perform autopsies and arrangements were made to fly in relatives to identify
the next of kin. The vessel Guardline Locator from the UK, with sophisticated
sonar equipment aboard, and the French cable laying vessel the Leon Thevenin,
with its robot mini-sub Scarab, were dispatched to locate the flight data
recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) boxes. The batteries of the
acoustic beacons attached to the recorders would survive for a maximum of
only 30 days. The boxes would he difficult to find and it was imperative
the search was commenced quickly. By 4 July, the Gardline Locator, equipment
had detected signals on the sea bed and on 9 July the CVR was pin-pointed
and raised to the surface by the Scarab. The next day the FDR was located
and recovered. It was a remarkable achievement. The two boxes were brought
ashore and dispatched to India for analysis.
The remaining wreckage of Flight 182 lay on the
sea bed at a depth of 6,700ft and its retrieval would be difficult if not
impossible. In preparation for a recovery attempt the Canadian Coast Guard
vessel John Cabot began combing the area, taking video film of the debris
on the bottom and shooting thousands of still photographs. Over the month
of July, fortunately in unusually calm weather, the painstaking process of
mapping the wreckage distribution was begun. It would be many weeks before
it was completed. On 16 July. the CVR andthe FDR boxes were opened in Bombay
and their contents analysed in the presence of international safety experts.
The results were startling. At precisely 07.13:01 hrs, the exact moment
of the break-up, both recordings had stopped abruptly. Flight 182's electrical
power supplying vital components had been completely and instantly severed.
The electrics bay must have been totally destroyed. This sudden loss of
electrical power was in keeping with analysis of the Shannon ATCC tape and
with the abrupt disappearance of the radar 'target. Whatever had happened
at 31,000ft out over the Atlantic was sudden and catastrophic indeed. Meanwhile,
in Canada and Japan, a full-scale investigation of the Air India crash and
the blast at Narita was being instigated by RCMP and Japanese police. At
first glance there appeared little to connect the two incidents, although
Canada obviously seemed to be the linking factor. If Kanishka had been destroyed
by a bomb, the answer could lie in Toronto or Montreal, the departure points
of Air India's I8I/2, or in Vancouver, the departure city of CP Air's
003.
As the weeks of July passed the police evidence
began to mount. An examination of passenger lists and computer records indicated
that a traveller by the name of L. Singh had checked in at Vancouver but
had failed to board CP Air's Flight 003 to Tokyo's Narita Airport. L. Singh
was also booked on Air India Flight 301 from Narita to Bangkok. Another
passenger, M. Singh, had also checked in at Vancouver for CP Air's Flight
060 to Toronto, and he had failed to turn up as well. In both instances their
bags had been loaded. M. Singh had not been confirmed on Flight 182 because
of overbooking at the time of reserving his seat, but he was wait-listed
for the trip. It was not permitted to check straight through, or interline
piece of luggage onto a flight for which a passenger was (only wait-listed,
so what had become of M. Singh and his bag? And where had L. Singh gone?
The Canadian investigation also began to unravel a confusing sequence of
bookings which had been made in the name of various Singhs, including one
A. Singh, in the days leading up to the tragedy. The situation was proving
to he suspicious, to say the least. The vast majority of the Sikhs in Vancouver
were hard working, law abiding citizens, but the plot to assassinate Rajiv
Ghandi in the US indicated that extremist elements did exist in such communities.
In fact, two of the names used in booking flights matched the names of the
two Sikhs wanted by the FBI. It was doubtful if those implicated in the scheme
to kill Gandhi were connected with events in Vancouver, but the names in
which flights were booked seemed to have been deliberately chosen to advertise
the fact that a Sikh terrorist group was involved. If Flight 182 had been
downed by a bomb, the motives for sabotage were becoming clear. Yet one strange
fact confused the inquiry: no Sikh extremist organisation claimed responsibility.
On that front there was total silence.
Other causes of the demise of Flight 182 had
also to be considered and examined. If results were not forthcoming from
the various investigations the answer could still lie at the bottom of the
Atlantic Ocean. Problems with the 'fifth pod' were dismissed with the preliminary
inquiry, but one other obvious source of the tragedy, almost too shocking
to contemplate with over 600+ 747s flying the skies of the globe daily,
could be some kind of catastrophic structural failure. If such an event had
occurred, other 747s throughout the world could be at serious risk. |
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