It was an ordinary quiet evening in the countryside of the Indian town of Charhi Dadri, just 100 km south of Delhi. The last fireworks on the occasion of the main Indian holiday, Diwali, died down and residents prepared for their usual working days. At exactly 6:45 p.m., with unusual punctuality for India, a Boeing 747 flew over these villages three times a week, following Saudi Airways flight SVA 763.
Thus the Indian magazine India Today began its report on the dramatic event of November 12, 1996, when in the skies over these villages the world’s deadliest mid-air collision, India’s deadliest aviation accident and the third deadliest aviation accident in the history of aviation.
Flight 763 from Delhi to Jeddah was carrying Indian oil workers flying to work in Saudi Arabia.
That evening, an Il-76 TD cargo plane flew from Kazakhstan to Delhi with a 10-member crew and 27 passengers – from Russia and Kyrgyzstan.
Around 6:40 p.m. local time, both planes – the Saudi one that took off from Delhi and the Kazakhstani one that was about to land there in 15 minutes – ended up in the same area.
The planes were piloted by an Indian dispatcher in Delhi named Datta. Communication was maintained with both aircraft and dispatch was reassured that they were flying at different levels. However, when the two green marks on Data’s monitor connected and then disappeared from the screen, the dispatcher realized that the irreparable had happened.
Seconds later, the commander of a US military transport aircraft Lockheed C-141 Starlifter, which was flying nearby, reported seeing a bright flash in the cloud. The cloud suddenly flashed bright red, the captain cried out in horror.
Later it turned out that as a result of the collision, the Il-76’s tail touched the left wing of the Saudi plane, after which the latter began to disintegrate in mid-air.
As a result of the collision, both planes were destroyed, the remains were scattered in a radius of 7 km. According to some reports, two or four passengers on the passenger plane were found alive, but died of their injuries before medics arrived.
A commission investigating the plane crash found that the pilots had received clear instructions. The Saudis were ordered to fly at an altitude of 14,000 feet, and the Kazakhs were ordered not to descend below 15,000 feet. Thus, following the instructions, the planes had to pass each other with a height difference of 300 m.
However, the transcript of the conversations showed that the crew of the Kazakh plane did not follow the instructions and continued to descend.
“We had a bad experience with these pilots from the former USSR. They don’t speak English very well. When asked to repeat the instructions they were given, they often said ‘understood’ and turned off the radio,” the Independent newspaper quoted an unnamed representative at the airport as saying. in Delhi.
According to the report, Indian air traffic controllers also often complained that pilots from the former USSR sometimes made mistakes in altitude and distance calculations because they were used to using the metric system rather than feet.
Disregarding the controller’s requirements to maintain an altitude of 15 thousand feet, the Kazakh crew descended to the corridor of the Saudi liner from 14 thousand feet (4,300 meters), and seconds before the collision, realizing the mistake, the Kazakh captain ordered “full throttle.” The plane started to climb, but collided with the approaching Saudi plane.
The Kazakh side later said the pilots were forced to fly lower due to increased turbulence, but the Indian side denied this, citing a weather report.
The Indian magazine article about the crash ends again with the local villagers gathering at the crash site and stealing all the valuables of the dead passengers. The bodies were carted to the nearest hospital morgue, but a third of the dead were never identified.
The former Kyrgyz Plenipotentiary in Delhi explained that the plane was chartered by reputable traders from Kyrgyzstan, who loaded the cargo plane with more than 30 tons of goods.
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