Our Bureau
New Delhi
The Air India flight AI 171, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which crashed on June 12th was one of the most horrific accidents in Indian aviation history. The plane crashed just moments after it took off and with that 241 lives were lost. A similar crash happened nearly 50 years ago when Air India flight AI 855, the Emperor Ashoka, crashed into the Arabian Sea off Mumbai.
The Emperor Ashoka that crashed in 1978 carried 213 individuals on board all of whom lost their lives when the plane crashed similarly to the Dreamliner, just a few moments after taking off from Mumbai. The flight was already delayed from its morning schedule after a bird strike damaged a wing flap a day before.
The plane was cleared to climb 8,000 feet but just a minute after the take off when the plane took a right turn to the Arabian Seat there was a malfunction. The Captain’s Attitude Director Indicator (ADI), which is one of the primary instruments that displays the aircraft’s pitch and bank attitude relative to the horizon, malfunctioned. The plane levelled but the ADI kept reflecting a right bank.
Madan Lal Kukar who was the captain of the flight voiced his concerns with the aircraft flying over the Arabian Sea at night without any visual horizon reference. The ADI had malfunctioned so when the captain applied left control inputs the plane lost control and kept rolling left at an angle of 108 degrees. It went down 35-40 degree nose-down descent from 2,000 feet. It crashed in the shallow waters which was only 10 meters deep and killed all the 213 lives on board.
In a report from the New York Times in 1982, it was reinstated that, “Irrational control wheel inputs given by the captain following complete unawareness of the attitude of the aircraft on his part after his ADI had malfunctioned.”
