On March 7, 1999, at 7 o'clock in the morning, an Indian Air Force An-32 cargo aircraft took off from Agra. The crew of Flt Lt Abrol(captain), Fg Off T.B. Paigude(co-pilot), Flt Lt N. Chandra(navigator), and JWO D.K. Naik(Flight Engineer), were from the Para Training School in Agra. Also aboard were six IAF officials Sqn Ldr S K Mishra, Wg Cdr B K Shukla, Wg Cdr M S Jaggi, Fg Off A K Shaikh and Corporals Ishwar Chand and Nur Zaman.

The aircraft was on its way to Delhi from Agra via the Gwalior air base. At Gwalior, eight more IAF officials boarded the aircraft. They were Wg Cdr S P Angra, Flt Lt D K Rajan, Fly Off Sajid, JWO K Shukla, Sergeants R P Singh and R N Singh and Corporal Siddiqui.

At around 8.12 am, the aircraft was given landing clearance by the Air Traffic Control (ATC) Tower at Indira Gandhi International(IGI) airport. Things went wrong at the time of landing. Flt Lt Abrol, the commander of the plane, reportedly tried to land from the North easterly direction but the wind direction and zero visibility forced him to change his landing approach. He tried to approach the airport from the south west direction. The aircraft was supposed to land at runway 10 of IGI airport, a secondary runway, since the newly installed CAT II ILS of the main runway was not functioning properly.

The plane was forced to make an ILS landing because the visibility was barely 500 metres. But all of a sudden at around 8.18 am, the aircraft disappeared from the radar. This is reportedly a common occurrence because of a transponder incompatibility. Efforts by the ground control to contact the aircraft proved futile.

At 8.22 a.m, barely two kilometers away from the airport in Sector 20 in Pappankalan in south-west Delhi, the tyres of the An-32 hit the raised embankment of a drain. The impact made the plane rise and hit overhead electricity wires. The now out-of-control aircraft then rammed into a jhuggi cluster before hitting the under-construction water tank. The plane immediately burst into flames and the fire spread to the jhuggis of the construction workers. The aircraft broke into two pieces. The nose of the aircraft settled on top of the tank and the tail was lying on the ground near the reservoir.

The noise of the impact could be heard for several miles around and even shattered the window panes of some houses in the vicinity. The accident site was a chaotic jumble of crumpled metal sheets, twisted wires and broken glasses. The debris of the plane lay scattered in a 50-metre radius around the crash site. While a wheel of the aircraft was lying near the half-broken embankment 40 metres away from the reservoir, pieces of metal could be seen everywhere. Among the debris was also a watch that had stopped at 8.22, which was the only way of ascertaining the exact time of the crash.

Babloo, a mason, who was also working on the site, called the police control room. Delhi Police Control Room vans and police officials reached the spot within 20 minutes of the mishap and cordoned-off the area. The rescue operations were carried out jointly by the officials ofthe Airport Authority of India, Indian Air Force and Delhi Fire Service(DFS). Centralised Ambulance and Trauma Service vans were also brought in.

Six hours after the crash took place hundreds of villagers from nearby areas remained at the spot trying to get a close glimpse of the broken aircraft. Policemen tried to prevent the surging mob from breaking the cordon and entering the accident area. Senior Indian Air Force officials surveyed the area trying to assess the reason for the mishap. The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) were not recovered till the next day and were sent to Chandigarh for decoding.

General Officer Commanding Delhi Area, Maj Gen Awasthi, was at the site. Also present were the LG, Mr Vijai Kapoor and Commissioner of Police, Mr V N Singh. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit also reached the spot and consoled the survivors.

The DCP (South West), Mr P.K. Bharadwaj, who was at the accident site supervising the operations, said the mishap occurred at about 8.22 am. "By 8.40 a.m. police control vans were rushed and six injured were rescued from the area," he said. Twenty five DFS tenders easily extinguished the fire using foam, however it took the firemen more than three-and-a-half hours to recover the bodies from the plane debris. Rescue workers had to literally saw through the aircraft to retrieve the dismembered body parts of the victims from the debris.

Till 10.30 am, 16 bodies had been taken out of the aircraft and three others were trapped in the tail-end of the plane. A crane had to be brought in to move a part of the aircraft to facilitate the process of removing the bodies. A special control room was set up at the Western Air Command in Palam. All the bodies, barring that of the three civilians were mangled. The bodies of the Air Force personnel were kept in the Research and Referral (R&R) hospital (9), Base hospital (10) and the Deen Dayal Upadhyay (1) hospital.

For the few construction workers and their families a stone's throw away from the airport, all hell broke loose, as the transport aircraft crashed. Out of the 40-odd jhuggis, built by the labourers engaged in the construction of the tank, many were gutted by the fire. Many labourers received burn injuries and were rushed to Deen Dayal Upadhyay and Safdarjung hospitals.

Shocked labourers could be seen trying to salvage their meagre belongings and assessing the damage. The casualty could have been higher had the construction workers been at work. The labourers, who were working at the water tank, were grateful for the delay caused by their contractor in providing them construction material on time. Labourer Ram Sharan said: "I was supposed to be at work at the site, but there was delay due to lack of availability of 'sariya' (iron rods) so I had to wait near the godown. Then I heard this loud noise and ran to see that a plane had crashed in the area where I would have been working."

Pradhan Singh Katwar (22), one of the eyewitnesses who was fortunate not to have found his hut coming under the blazing aircraft, saw the Indian Air Force An-32 heading straight towards his residence near a water tank. "For a moment I could not believe what I was seeing. Somehow I gathered my senses and shouted "Run, Run". Even before many of us could react there was a deafening sound followed by a pall of smoke," he said. "It was only after the smoke cleared did we realise that the aircraft had ploughed through the compound wall and hit the water tank. Had the course of the plane been even a few metres off, I would have surely been killed," he added.

According to Jasru, an eyewitness: ``I first heard a deafening sound and then suddenly there, right before my eyes was a huge ball of fire atop the water tank. Everything was obliterated by the dark bellowing clouds of smoke.'' Another eyewitness, Deviphalsawa, who works for the contractor for the housing complex, said the aircraft's wheels first hit the walls of a canal and it went up to hit the electric wires before breaking through the boundary wall.

A slum-dweller, Phoolmani 38, who lost two children in the fire, did not know which was the bigger tragedy, that her two sons(Alka12, and Krishna 7), were burnt to death in the aircraft crash or that her entire life's savings have been lost. Working as a labourer in Pappankalan for the past three years, Phoolmani lived in a tent in the compound of the Delhi Jal Board water tank. She and her husband earned their living by working at the construction site.

A sobbing Phoolmani said she was working in a nearby field when the mishap occurred, this saved her life. "I heard a very loud sound and soon the entire area was full of thick smoke," Her sons, were still sleeping in the tent when the plane crashed. "Everything became dark for a few moments and then there was fire everywhere. Our tent was in flames," she recalled.

When Chief Minister Shiela Dixit spoke to her, all that Phoolmani could remember was that all her worldly possessions were gone. Her tent was in the direct path of the aircraft. "My life's savings, a total of Rs 3,500, is gone. The only clothes I am left with are the ones I am wearing," she said. She was given some money by the Chief Minister. "For no fault of ours we have lost our two small sons,"' said the husband of Phoolmani. The young boys did not know that death would come to them in this manner from the skies.

Mr Hawa Singh, Executive Engineer, Delhi Development Authority, had a special reason for being thankful to the Almighty. He said there were three command tanks in the complex with two of them filled with about 8,000 gallons of water each. The aircraft hit the third tank which was under construction. "I even dread to think what the situation would have been had the plane hit any of the water tanks filled with water. Not only the whole area would have been inundated, those standing close by could have been washed away by the force of gushing water," he said.

If the plane crashed 500 metres ahead it would have blown up a major Indian Oil Corporation depot. The Indian Oil Corporation has one of its largest depots in Northern India in the same area, where several thousand litres of the highly inflammable fuel are stored. From here it is then transported to different parts of the Delhi and Northern India. If the AN 32 had crashlanded at the Indian Oil Corporation depot, the result would have been a raging inferno. The death toll would have been devastating. Apart from the loss to human life, the damage to property would have also been phenomenal.

The crash occurred just about 25 minutes after the Boeing carrying Defence Minister George Fernandes Information and Broadcasting Minister Pramod Mahajan and other dignitaries, including Members of Parliament and senior officials of the government took off from the IGI airport for the Vayushakti show at Pokhran. The Defence Minister's plane was the last to take off from the IGI airport in the IAF movement for Pokhran.

Meanwhile, Indian Airlines had redirected its flights coming to Delhi from Chennai, Mumbai, Calcutta and other destinations to their originating airports. Sahara and Jet Airways had also redirected their flights to Mumbai and other airports during the time the airport was closed. Chaos prevailed at both the international and domestic airports for several hours following the crash of the An-32 plane, as no announcement was made for the reason of the closure of the air traffic at IGI airport.

Pradeep Mehra, one of the passengers, said: " At least the airport authorities should have informed us that there has been a crash and the runway was being closed. We have been running from pillar to post but the airport officials did not provide us with any information." A large number of people waited for the arrivals of the flights at the Indira Gandhi International Airport. Panic prevailed after the news spread that a plane had crashed.

Vandana Mehrotra, who had come to receive her brother at the Indira Gandhi International Airport: "Somebody mentioned that there had been a crash. But after that there was no further information as to which plane had crashed. All the people who had gathered at the airport spent several anxious moments and later came to know from the television news that an Air Force plane had crashed near the airport." It was only in late afternoon the situation started limping back to normalcy when the airports were opened.

An airport official said that no flights had to be cancelled. " The international flights were not disrupted since there were hardly any flights in the morning. But the domestic flights were affected following the closure of the airport for over two hours. But we ensured that no flights were cancelled. Of course, the domestic flights which had to leave in the morning were delayed by a few hours. "

Two separate enquiries were instituted into the crash by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and the Indian Air Force. The IAF Court of Enquiry was conducted by Air Commodore R.V Kumar based at Chandigarh.

Various theories started floating as to how the accident took place. Initial reports pointed to pilot error due to poor visibility. Sources point out that at about 8.12 am, the Air Traffic Controller spoke to the pilot and the pilot did not mention anything about engine problems or other technical hiccups. The An-32, which is also called the workhorse of the IAF, is known to be a reliable aircraft and has performed well in difficult flying conditions. However, the chances that the ill-fated aircraft had developed a technical snag just before landing is also being looked into by the air crash investigators.

"There can be a number of reasons that might have resulted in the mishap. It could be anything from a bird hit to loss of power. The exact reason would be known after the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are recovered. But it seems the approach of the aircraft was very shallow," said Wing Commander(Retired) Praful Bakshi, former Deputy Director, Accident Investigation Board of the Indian Air Force.

Sources claimed that although the pilot Flt-Lt Mohit Abrol, had an excellent track record as a flier, the possibility he made a calculation error while descending was not being ruled out. It was possible that by the time Flt Lt Abrol would have realised his mistake, it would have been too late to make any corrections. IAF sources said Flt Lt Abrol could have miscalculated the descent leading to the aircraft ploughing into the water tank after snapping overhead wires. The IAF officials said the plane had hit the cables after descending to a lower than required height, apparently due to poor visibility.

Air Marshal (retired) Denzil Keelor, a hero of the 1971 war and who was with the IAF's transport wing till recently, blamed construction activity around the airport as a contributory factor for the crash. He lambasted the Delhi airport authorities for their callousness. "Ten of my boys have died," he said angrily. "How many more must go before these guys put in place basic rules that all airports follow?".

He said aircraft faced difficulty while approaching the runway because of the construction in the vicinity of the airport. The rules refer to not allowing human settlements in and around airports. The IAF has repeatedly pointed out that the primary reason for the increased number of bird hits is the growth of human settlements near all major airports in India. The settlements, often cramped and dirty, generate a lot of garbage, which attracts birds, including big ones like hawks and kites.

Moreover, once the settlers have settled down, as they have outside Delhi airport, they start building bigger structures. The reservoir is believed to have been one such. But the Delhi Development Authority, which is building a large township near the airport and whose workers live in the settlement, denied this. "The height of the tank is within prescribed limits. The work on the project started one-and-a-half years ago and is almost near completion,"said Ajit Chauhan, a DDA assistant engineer present at the site.

Airports Authority of India member (operations) Rabi Lal also insisted that the settlement and tank were well beyond the range of normal flying aircraft. "All settlements are two to three kilometres beyond the runway, and hence quite safe for any aircraft flying at normal height," he said. He added that the reservoir was below the landing approach slope of aircraft. The slope is the descending, or ascending, flight path of an aircraft coming in to land or taking off. "All constructions come well below the height of the slope as per international standards," Lal said.

Other reports say the aircraft first hit high-tension wires and then the reservoir, before bursting into flames. "Every airport keeps a margin for safety by ensuring that the ground near the runway is clear in case a pilot brings his plane down too early or there is an error. By allowing construction and human settlements, you are destroying that margin," said Air Marshal Keelor. "Why then even bother with such margins and safety ideas?"

In May 1993, an Indian Airlines aircraft failed to climb during takeoff from Aurangabad airport in Maharashtra and its wheels hit a truck parked on the highway beyond the runway. All passengers on board were killed. A demand was then made to ensure a wide enough distance from the end of the runway for such emergencies. But Rabi Lal asked how much the gap should be? "In Bangalore, there is a golf course beyond the runway," he said. "A few years ago, the DDA wanted to follow suit, thinking it would be a safe venture. But they changed their mind after an Airbus 320 crashed near the course."

He reiterated that all construction near Delhi airport conform to international norms. "In the AAI, we had no objection to the construction of the reservoir because it was sufficiently low," he said. "Initial reports say the pilot was flying below the stipulated height."

But Air Marshal Keelor insisted the distance is not enough. For years on end, he said, the IAF and civil aviation have been warning the government of the dangers of allowing such settlements near airports. The IAF even conducted studies that showed a clear correlation between growing settlements near airports and rising crashes. Rabi Lal washed the AAI's hands of the question. "The responsibility for all construction beyond the airport is that of the civic officials of the city concerned. In Delhi, it is the DDA that is responsible."

The weather is also to be blamed for the IAF crash. Just before the An-32 was due to land, fog descended on the airport and visibility went down drastically. Airport officials have tactfully stated that visibility had gone down to below 500 metres when the crash occurred. As Air Marshal Keelor pointed out, "it could also mean the visibility had dropped to zero".

"I live near the airport and at that time, the visibility had indeed gone down to zero. This is also proved by the fact that the pilot could not see the pylons or the water reservoir." Yet, if sudden fog can cause a crash, it is also because Delhi airport does not have the equipment necessary to avert such disasters. Purchase of an advanced Instrument Landing System has been hanging fire for many years now.

"Why can't the government just buy the ILS?" asks Air Marshal Keelor. "Is it a question of money? The government has enough money to test nuclear bombs, but it cannot buy an ILS that would have saved the lives of so many brilliant officers of the ranks of squadron leader and wing commander!"

The An-32 was due to land on runway #10, which has a minima of 1200 metres (that is, the runway is not to be used if visibility is below 1200m). Airport officials claim to have informed the pilot about the RVR (runway visibility range), and he in turn had said he was certified to clear a 1200 RVR. "These things are based on trust. There is no way we can check it then and there," said a source, adding that the board of inquiry set up will clarify the facts.

But the fact remains that Delhi airport does not have a good record. Barely two and a half years ago, on November 12, 1996, within minutes of takeoff, a Saudia Boeing 747 collided with a Kazakh Air Ilyushin-76 coming in to land, killing 349 people.

Last winter, flights in and out of Delhi were badly disrupted for several days by heavy fog. Delhi airport uses only a category 1 ILS, which is incapable of dealing with heavy fog. The airport has installed a category 2 ILS, but cannot use it because a technical fault has not been repaired for three years! According to the Air Traffic Controllers' Guild, the newly installed CAT2 ILS of the main runway was reportedly not functioning properly. "It has not been functioning ever since it was commissioned in mid-February this year," the spokesman observed.

The Guild further maintained that in January 1999, one of the components of the ILS system had failed when an Austrian Airlines Airbus 310 was preparing to land on runway 28 — the opposite runway of runway 10 — of IGI airport in foggy conditions. The ATCOs on duty at the new ATS complex never knew of the failure of this critical component but fortunately the Austrian aircraft got away with only a 'bad' approach. "The Guild would also like to place on record that on February 21 this year, an Air India flight 5110 had gone off radar control because of the communication systems failure at the airport in Delhi," the Guild spokesperson said. Major airports across the world use category 3 ILS, which enables pilots to land even when visibility is zero.

Pointing to the Saudia-Kazakh mid-air collision and the inability to install top-class equipment as perfect examples of the government's indifference, Air Marshal Keelor said, "The collision occurred because both landing and takeoff are from the same corridor. Why did they not separate the two, as is done all over the world? And what have the airport authorities done after that?"

On March 10, 1999, The 18 Indian Air Force personnel killed in the crash were sent on their final journey with full military honours. Five different Indian Air Force aircraft took the coffins with the bodies of the dead to seven destinations where their family members perform their last rites. Though the families of three of the victims had come to Delhi, the bodies were not handed over to them there.

Laid in coffins covered with the national flag, the dead were given a ceremonial send off. Air Marshal M Mohan, laid the wreath on the coffins at the Palam Technical Area. He laid the wreath on behalf of the Air Chief who was away on an official visit to Nagpur. The bodies of Wing Commander M S Jaggi, Squadron leader S K Mishra, Wg Cdr D K Shukla, Flight Lieutanant Mohit Abrol and Corporal Ishwar Chand were taken to Agra. Flt Lt A Shaikh, Flt Lt D K Rajan, Wg Cdr S B Angara were taken to Gwalior.

The same plane going to Gwalior has taken the bodies of JWO D K Naik tpo Kalai Kunda and Corporal Noor Zaman to Barrackpore. JWO K Shukla, Sgt R P Singh, Sgt R N Singh, Sgt S K Shrivastava and Corporal Siddiqui have been taken to Allahabad. According to the IAF, this was done in accordance with the wishes of the families of the victims. The last rites of the victims were conducted with full miliatry honours at the places where their family members had requested.