Crash mirrors 1978 Emperor Ashoka mishap

The tragic crash of an Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which came down on a medical college campus in a residential area of Ahmedabad just seconds after take-off on June 12, bears an eerie resemblance to another air disaster in 1978. That year, Air India flight AI 855, named “Emperor Ashoka”, plunged into the Arabian Sea shortly after departing from Mumbai.

The Emperor Ashoka crash claimed all 213 lives on board, just 3 km off the Mumbai coast. Like the Ahmedabad incident, the 1978 crash occurred within moments of take-off.

On New Year’s Day 1978, flight AI 855 took off from Mumbai’s Santa Cruz International Airport (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport) at 20:12 IST, bound for Dubai. The flight had been delayed from its morning schedule due to a bird strike the previous day, which damaged a wing flap.

Carrying 190 passengers and 23 crew members, the aircraft was cleared to climb to 8,000 feet. About a minute into the flight, it began a gentle right turn over the Arabian Sea.

However, the Captain’s Attitude Director Indicator (ADI) —the key instrument displaying the aircraft’s pitch and bank —malfunctioned. It froze, continuing to indicate a right bank even when the wings had levelled.

According to a 1982 New York Times report, the official inquiry concluded that the likely cause was “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”.

India