Kerala’s worst air crash

The crash of the Air-India Express Boeing 737 at Kozhikode on 07/08/2020 resulted in the loss of at least 21 lives.

It appears to have been the worst aviation accident in Kerala (counting both civil and military aircraft). The previous worst accident was near Kochi airport in 1998, which resulted in the loss of 9 lives including 3 on the ground:

https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19980730-0

One military crash had a slightly higher death toll of 10 :

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/25980

There have been other accidents which occurred outside Kerala but had a large number of casualties from that state. Offhand one can think of Mangaluru 2010 and Mumbai 1978 which must have had at least half of the passengers from Kerala:

https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19780101-1

https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20100522-0

When the Prime Minister’s plane crashed

Morarji Desai is remembered for various things (particularly his drinking habits and his birthday on February 29), and more seriously for being the first non-Congress Prime Minister (for what it is worth). He was also one of the few major political figures of India to escape a fatal plane crash (unlike Sardar Patel’s case in 1949 where no one was injured although the plane was written off).

A bit of legend has come up regarding this crash, citing the valiant crew of the IAF who “sacrificed their lives in order to save the passengers”. Things have not been helped because the results of inquiries into military aviation accidents are not generally released to the press.

In contrast, the DGCA now does put detailed accident reports on its website www.dgca.in

Click on the Aircraft tab and then Accident/Incident

Summaries of civil aviation accident reports going back to 1960 can also be seen there. You can even get this information back to 1950 through RTI.

Anyway, we come back to the crash of an IAF TU-124 near Jorhat on November 4, 1977.  The basic details can be seen here:

https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19771105-0

As you can see, the front portion was badly damaged but the rest of the aircraft was relatively intact. The TU-124 was carrying 11 crew and 9 passengers. 5 of the crew in the front portion were killed while some of the passengers and other crew were injured, some seriously including the PM’s son Kanti and the then CM of Arunachal PK Thungon. The PM himself appears to have been unscathed.

Now the report of the inquiry commission headed by Air Marshal Subbiah does not seem to be available to the public. The next best reference may be this blogpost by a retired senior IAF officer:

https://tkstales.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/754/

Read it carefully. Many of the follow-up comments are of interest.

It does seem to be due to human error, but whether the crew or someone else in the IAF was responsible is still unclear.

The accident site appears to be near Takelagaon village near Bhalukmara railway station, about 10 km south-west of Jorhat airport.

https://www.google.co.in/maps/@26.6644431,94.1154097,14z

Update: A first-person account written by one of the IAF officers who survived the crash It has a few more pictures:

http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/history/1970s/1364-jorhat-crash.html

Footnote: More about Morarji Desai here:

https://abn397.wordpress.com/2015/01/21/morarji-desai-everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-him-but-were-afraid-to-ask/

 

MH 370: The saga STILL continues

I have written on this topic before. Here is a summary of what was known in December 2014:

https://abn397.wordpress.com/2014/12/27/mh-370-the-saga-continues

and a later comment on the Indian angle:

https://abn397.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/mh-370-the-indian-angle/

As mentioned earlier, one forum which attracts a fair number of well-informed comments is:

http://jeffwise.net/

Sometimes a single article attracts over 1200 comments, which are worth reading if you want to know about this deepest of mysteries.

Basically the old idea that the crash’s location was determined by the BFO transmissions is being given less credence now-so if the plane did not go to the southern Indian Ocean, where else could it have gone? This aspect is studied by Victor Iannello here:

http://jeffwise.net/2015/04/29/guest-post-northern-routes-for-mh370-ending-at-airports/#more-3915

Anyone a bit familiar with Indian aviation would see something wrong in his scenario. Look at the map and then see my comment (among the first few).

MH 370-miscellaneous notes

What India and Pakistan had to say about the “Northern Route” last March:

http://www.ibtimes.com/malaysian-airlines-flight-370-india-pakistan-say-they-know-nothing-saw-nothing-1562057

What the Maldivians said they saw on March 8:

http://www.maldives.com/destination-guides/debris-missing-flight-mh370-washed-beach-maldives/762

http://www.maldivesfinest.com/maldives-eye-witness-furious-mh370

And if they did see something, could it be from this airline which has cargo flights between Sri Lanka and the Maldives:

The colour scheme of the DC-8 is not too different from that of MAS. Here is a closer look:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FitsAir#mediaviewer/File:Expo_Air_Douglas_DC-8-63CF_Rioux.jpg

Their current website is below. Perhaps someone in Colombo could take a closer look at them:

http://fitsair.com/out-of-sri-lanka.html