Garuda Indonesia Flight 892

The accident aircraft was a Convair CV-990-30A-5 jet airliner powered by four General Electric CJ805-23B turbofan engines with registration PK-GJA. It was the third Convair 990 built, with serial number 30-10-3, and originally was intended for American Airlines. The aircraft was configured to carry up to 99 passengers and was named Pajajaran after the former capital city of the Sunda Kingdom in the Indonesian province of West Java.[5][6] Formerly used as one of the test aircraft to certify the Convair 990 type, it was later modified to match the upgraded "990A" variant specifications. The airline took delivery of the aircraft on 24 January 1964.[7]

Garuda Indonesian Airways Flight 892 arrived at Bombay–Santa Cruz Airport at 01:45 a.m. local time (08:15 p.m. UTC 27 May). Having originated in Jakarta with two previous stopovers in Singapore and Bangkok, the flight was part of the airline's Jakarta–Singapore–Bangkok–Bombay–Karachi–Cairo–Rome–Amsterdam milk run.[8] The flight made its third stopover in Bombay to pick up more passengers, change operating crew members, and refuel the aircraft before continuing to Karachi, the flight's next stopover. Eleven passengers were supposed to board the flight in Bombay, but five passengers canceled their tickets at the last minute, leaving the remaining six to board the flight, and the flight was released to depart with 15 passengers and 14 crew on board. The weather at Bombay–Santa Cruz Airport was reportedly normal when the flight left Bombay.[9]

The aircraft took off from Bombay at 02:32 a.m. local time (09:02 p.m. UTC 27 May). At 02:39 a.m. (09:09 p.m. UTC 27 May), the air traffic control at Bombay–Santa Cruz Airport lost contact with the aircraft; there was no distress signal received from the aircraft before the contact went lost.[10] The aircraft reportedly had crashed at 02:44 a.m. (09:14 p.m. UTC 27 May), with the crash site located approximately 1–1.5 mi (1.6–2.4 km) east of Nalla Sopara railway station near the village of Bilalpada. The explosion from the aircraft as it crashed into the ground caused at least one large piece of the aircraft debris to form a 20 ft (6.1 m) deep crater at the crash site, while most of the aircraft debris fell strewn over a three sq mi (7.8 km²) wide area.[9]

All 29 passengers and crew onboard the flight died in the crash. Seventeen people in Bilalpada village reportedly were injured, of which two were serious. Three villagers had to get hospitalized; one was later pronounced dead.[11] Besides human casualties, the crash destroyed several villagers' huts and a school-owned shed. Moreover, some of the burning debris from the aircraft hit and set a stable ablaze that subsequently killing 19 buffaloes inside it.[9]

On the Bombay–Karachi flight leg, Garuda Indonesian Airways Flight 892 carried 15 passengers. In terms of passenger departure cities, six passengers boarded the flight in Jakarta, three in Bangkok, and six in Bombay. Six passengers were from Indonesia, four were from Pakistan, two were from Greece, one was from India, one was from Japan, and one was from the Netherlands. Among the passengers from Indonesia was an official of the country's National Nuclear Energy Agency whose also the wife of G. A. Siwabessy, the-then Indonesian Minister of Health. She was on a trip to Vienna to attend a conference organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency.[12] In addition, the sole passenger from India and the Netherlands was the president of the Institution of Engineers (India) and a leader of the Moral Re-Armament, respectively.[2][9]

The flight had 14 crew members on board; all were from Indonesia. Ten were the operating crew on the flight, consisting of four cockpit crew and six cabin crew, while the remaining four were deadheading crew. The cockpit crew members consisted of Captain Abdul Rohim,[6] Captain Soedharmono, Flight navigator Asmoro, and Flight engineer Djumadi. One of the two pursers was the younger brother of Ahmad Yunus Mokoginta, the Indonesian Ambassador to Egypt at the time. All the operating crew members boarded the flight in Bombay to replace the previous crew members set, who had worked since the flight originated in Jakarta. The newly-boarded crew members were supposed to be replaced by another set of crew members in Cairo. Meanwhile, the four deadheading crew members, all originating from Jakarta with the original operating crew members, remained on board the flight.[2]

In the hours after the accident, several representatives from the Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation arrived at the crash site and then conducted an initial investigation.[9] A joint team from Indonesia, which consisted of representatives from the Indonesian Directorate of Civil Aviation, Lufthansa, and the airline itself, was dispatched to Bombay to join the investigation.[2] They arrived in Bombay in the morning of the following day. The search for the aircraft's flight recorder began the day after the arrival of the Indonesian team at the crash site.[10]

The cause of the accident is not clearly known, even though there was a court inquiry into it, headed by Y. S. Tambe, a former Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, and the accident report reportedly would be completed by January 1970.[1] However, the error of the ground staff at Bombay–Santa Cruz Airport, which refueled the jet airliner with avgas instead of kerosene-based avtur, is presumed as the probable cause of the accident. The alleged consequence is that the jet airliner experienced a partial or complete engine failure during the flight's early climb-out phase, causing the pilots to lose control of the aircraft. The aircraft then entered a nosedive until it eventually crashed in an almost vertical attitude.[3][4]

President Suharto of Indonesia sent an aircraft from the airline to repatriate all deceased Indonesians in the accident. Several stones were taken from the crash site and put inside each coffin of the Indonesian victims. Most of the perished Indonesian passengers were buried in public cemeteries, while the health minister's wife and the entire crew members were buried in a heroes cemetery.[13]

Following the accident, the airline grounded the remaining two Convair 990A aircraft and suspended its twice-weekly Jakarta–Amsterdam and vice versa milk run service. The latter would later get reinstated, but the operating aircraft for the flight got replaced by the Douglas DC-8 on lease from KLM. The Convair 990A fleet subsequently was relegated to fly on domestic and Asian routes until the airline withdrew the type from service in 1973.[6]

• List of Garuda Indonesia incidents and accidents