newsWikipedia1996 · Charkhi Dadri, India
Two airliners collided over India in the deadliest mid-air collision ever
On 12 November 1996 a Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakhstan Airlines Ilyushin Il-76 collided in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349 people, the deadliest such collision in history. The two aircraft were on the same air corridor, one climbing out of Delhi and the other descending towards it, at nearby altitudes. Investigators found the Kazakh crew had descended below the altitude they were cleared to. Language problems between the crew and controllers, and the lack of a separate corridor for arrivals and departures, were also identified as factors.
The crash led India to adopt a rule requiring collision-avoidance systems (TCAS) on aircraft flying in its airspace and to separate arrival and departure routes at Delhi. Since then, warning systems that tell pilots to climb or descend have become standard worldwide.
Many aviation safety rules, including mandatory warning systems, were adopted only after deadly accidents exposed gaps, which is why aviation is often described as a system that learns through its failures.
The Boeing 747 was Saudia flight 763, bound for Jeddah, and the Il-76 was a cargo and passenger flight from Chimkent.
background
On 12 November 1996, Saudia Flight 763, a Boeing 747-100B en route from Delhi, India to Jeddah with a stopover in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907, an Ilyushin Il-76 en route from Shymkent, Kazakhstan to Delhi, collided over the city of Charkhi Dadri in the state of Haryana, around 100 kilometres (62 mi; 54 nmi) west of Delhi. The crash killed all 349 people on board both planes, making it the world's deadliest mid-air collision, the deadliest aviation accident without survivors, and the deadliest aviation accident in the Indian subcontinent.
From Wikipedia: 1996 Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗ · text CC BY-SA 4.0Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
Image: Wikimedia Commons
