Air India Flight 101

Coordinates: 45°52′40″N 06°52′00″E / 45.87778°N 6.86667°E / 45.87778; 6.86667
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Air India Flight 101
Geneva International Airport, Geneva, Switzerland
DestinationHeathrow Airport, London, United Kingdom
Passengers106
Crew11
Fatalities117
Survivors0

Air India Flight 101 was a scheduled

Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the founder and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India
.

The crash occurred just a few hundred feet away from where an Air India

Lockheed 749 Constellation operating as Air India Flight 245 while on a charter flight, had crashed in 1950.[1]

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.[2] It had flown a total of 16,188 hours.[2] It was named

Kanchenjunga
, after the third highest mountain in the world.

Accident

Air India Flight 101 was a scheduled flight from

Geneva International Airport after the aircraft had passed Mont Blanc.[3] The pilot, thinking that he had passed Mont Blanc, started to descend and flew into the Mont Blanc massif in France near the Rocher de la Tournette, at an elevation of 4,750 metres (15,584 ft).[3][5] All 106 passengers and 11 crew were killed.[5][1]

Casualties

Among the 117 passengers who died was Dr.

Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the founder and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India.[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.[3][5]

The investigation concluded:[3]

a) The pilot-in-command calculated his position in relation to Mont Blanc and reported his own estimate of this position to the controller; the radar controller noted a different position of the aircraft and passed a communication to the aircraft which would enable it to change its position.

b) 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

Mont-Blanc Massif
.

Much of the wreckage of the crashed Boeing still remains at the crash site. In 2008, a climber found some Indian newspapers dated 23 January 1966.[6] An engine from Air India Flight 245, which had crashed at virtually the same spot sixteen years earlier in 1950, was also discovered.

On 21 August 2012, a 9-kilogram (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.[7][8] 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.[9] 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.J.K. Menon.[10] 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.[11][12]

In September 2013, a French alpinist found a metal box marked with the Air India logo at the site of the plane crash on Mont Blanc containing rubies, sapphires and emeralds, valued at over €245,000, which he handed in to the police to be returned to the rightful owners.

Lloyd's.[6] On 11 October 2023, the part belonging to the alpinist was sold at an auction in Chambéry for €25,000.[15]

In 2017, Daniel Roche, a Swiss climber who has searched the Bossons Glacier for wreckage from Air India Flights 245 and 101, found human remains and wreckage including a Boeing 707 aircraft engine.[16] In July 2020, as a result of melting of the glacier, Indian newspapers from 1966 were found in good condition.[17]

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b Sean Mendis (26 July 2004). "Air India : The story of the aircraft". Airwhiners.net. Archived from the original on 24 July 2016. Retrieved 13 June 2013.
  2. ^ a b Pither 1998, p. 291
  3. ^
    Aviation Safety Network
  4. ISBN 0-8453-4777-2
    .
  5. ^ a b c d "The Air-India Disaster". Flight International: 174. 3 February 1966. Archived from the original on 25 September 2013. Retrieved 21 December 2009.
  6. ^ a b c Patrick Bodenham (14 March 2014). "The mystery of Mont Blanc's hidden treasure". BBC News. Archived from the original on 13 August 2020. Retrieved 13 July 2020.
  7. ^ "Diplomatic post bag from 1966 Indian plane crash found on Mont Blanc". The Daily Telegraph. 30 August 2012. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 28 November 2013.
  8. ^ "Indian diplomatic bag found on Mt Blanc after 46 years". Agence-France-Presse. 29 August 2012. Archived from the original on 26 February 2014. Retrieved 22 February 2019.
  9. ^ "Indian diplomatic bag found after 46 years". Firstpost.com. 18 September 2012. Archived from the original on 28 November 2016. Retrieved 27 February 2017.
  10. ^ "'Diplomatic bag' reaches New Delhi". Deccan Herald. 19 September 2012. Archived from the original on 23 February 2019. Retrieved 27 February 2017.
  11. ^ "AI purser brings back diplomatic bag lost in crash that killed father". Indian Express. Archived from the original on 17 August 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2017.
  12. ^ "Diplomatic bag lost in air crash brought back home". assamtribune.com. 15 September 2010. Archived from the original on 17 August 2022. Retrieved 21 July 2022.
  13. ^ "Climber finds treasure trove off Mont Blanc". Yahoo News Malaysia. AFP. 26 September 2013. Archived from the original on 28 September 2013.
  14. ^ "Climber can keep $84,000-worth of jewels he found on Mont Blanc". CNN. 7 December 2021. Archived from the original on 9 December 2021. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
  15. ^ "Un trésor, découvert sur un glacier du massif du Mont-Blanc, vendu aux enchères". RTS. 11 October 2023.
  16. ^ Majumdar, Neera (24 January 2018). "Sabotage or accident? The theories about how India lost nuclear energy pioneer Homi Bhabha". ThePrint.in. Archived from the original on 12 December 2020. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  17. ^ "Indian papers resurfacing in French Alps could be from 1966 plane crash". BBC News. 13 July 2020. Archived from the original on 13 July 2020. Retrieved 13 July 2020.

Bibliography

External links
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