Air India Flight 245

Air India Flight 245 was a scheduled Air India passenger flight that crashed into Mont Blanc, France on the morning of 3 November 1950.

Air India Flight 245
A similar Lockheed Constellation at Prague Airport in 1961
Accident
Date3 November 1950
SummaryControlled Flight into Terrain (CFIT) in poor weather
SiteMont Blanc
Aircraft
Aircraft typeLockheed L-749A Constellation
OperatorAir India
RegistrationVT-CQP
Flight originSahar International Airport, Bombay, India
1st stopoverYeşilköy Airport, Istanbul, Turkey
2nd stopoverCointrin Airport, Geneva, Switzerland
DestinationLondon Heathrow Airport, London, United Kingdom
Passengers40
Crew8
Fatalities48
Survivors0

The plane operating the flight was a Lockheed L-749A Constellation named Malabar Princess, registered VT-CQP. It was piloted by Captain Alan R. Saint, 34, and co-pilot V. Y. Korgaokar. It was carrying 40 passengers and 8 crew on a Bombay-Istanbul-Geneva-London route. While over France, descending towards Geneva Airport, the flight crashed into the French Alps, killing all on board.[1][2][3]

Accident

The airplane hit the face of the Rocher de la Tournette at a height of 4,677 m (15,344 ft), on the French side of Mont Blanc.[2] Stormy weather prevented immediate rescue efforts; debris was located by a Swiss plane on 5 November, and rescue parties reached the site two days later.[2] There were no survivors. The last transmission from the aircraft, received by controllers at Grenoble and Geneva, was "I am vertical with Voiron, at 4700 meters altitude." at 10:43 a.m.

Some mail on board the flight was recovered after the crash and was annotated with "Retardé par suite d'accident aerien"; further items of mail were found in 1951 & 1952. On 8 June 1978, a patrol of the French mountain police found letters and a sack at the foot of the Bossons Glacier. Fifty seven envelopes and fifty five letters (without envelopes) were recovered and all bar eight letters were forwarded to their original addressees.[4] Sixteen years later, Air India Flight 101 crashed in almost exactly the same spot.[5] In September 2013, a climber discovered a cache of jewelry that is believed to have been aboard one of these two flights.[6]

References

  1. "MALABAR PRINCESS". Retrieved 17 June 2009.
  2. "The "Malabar Princess" Catastrophe". Archived from the original on 20 June 2009. Retrieved 17 June 2009.
  3. "Accident description". Aviation Safety. Retrieved 17 June 2009.
  4. Muir, Douglas N. "Letters Freed from a Glacier after 28 Years". Stamp Collecting. Vol. 131 No. 10 (26th October 1978), p. 1051.
  5. Mendis, Sean (26 July 2004). "Air India : The story of the aircraft". Airwhiners.net. Retrieved 13 June 2013.
  6. Michael Pearson and Saskya Vandoorne (26 September 2013). "Mysterious cache of jewels turns up atop French glacier". CNN.

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