1957 aircraft collision at Calcutta Airport

The 1957 Calcutta Airport aircraft collision occurred on 1 September 1957. On that day, an Airwork Ltd. Handley Page HP.81 Hermes IVA arriving from Delhi landed in adverse weather conditions on the wrong runway of Calcutta Dum Dum Airport and collided with an Indian Airlines Douglas C-47A-25-DK (DC-3). The 64 occupants of the Handley Page Hermes were uninjured; the four occupants of the DC-3 were killed.

Accident sequence

As the Hermes approached Calcutta, the pilots received clearance at 04:41 for an instrument landing system approach to runway 19L. As the aircraft neared the runway, it was not visible because of a rain shower, so the pilots carried out a missed approach. At 05:01 air traffic control offered the captain of the Hermes a radar-guided approach to runway 01R. The Hermes was the second aircraft in the sequence due to land at that time. The controller guided the aircraft by radar and at 05:29 gave clearance for a landing under visual flight rules. At that point the aircraft was one mile from the threshold of runway 01R and was to the left of the extended centreline.

After the captain had flown through the clouds, he sighted the runway. He turned off the volume of his radar receiver and continued the approach visually. In fact, however, the aircraft was approaching runway 01L. Shortly before, an Indian Airlines Douglas DC-3 had received clearance to line up on runway 01L in preparation for a takeoff. On landing, the Hermes collided with the DC-3, which was torn apart in the collision. All four occupants of the DC-3 were killed. The occupants of the Hermes, by contrast, were uninjured.

Cause of the accident

The accident investigators held the captain of the Hermes responsible for the accident, because he had turned down the volume of the radar receiver in the final phase of the approach and continued the approach under conditions that did not allow him to identify the correct runway.