Air India Flight 101

Air India Flight 101

Crash site of Flight 101
Accident
Date	24 January 1966 (1966-01-24)
Summary	Controlled flight into terrain
Site	Mont Blanc massif, France 45°52′40″N 06°52′00″E / 45.87778°N 6.86667°E / 45.87778; 6.86667
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Boeing 707–437
Aircraft name	Kanchenjunga
Operator	Air India
IATA flight No.	AI101
ICAO flight No.	AIC101
Call sign	AIR INDIA 101
Registration	VT-DMN
Flight origin	Sahar International Airport, Bombay, India
1st stopover	Delhi International Airport, New Delhi, India
2nd stopover	Beirut International Airport, Beirut, Lebanon
Last stopover	Geneva International Airport, Geneva, Switzerland
Destination	Heathrow Airport, London, United Kingdom
Passengers	106
Crew	11
Fatalities	117
Survivors	0

Air India Flight 101 was a scheduled Air India passenger flight from Bombay (present-day Mumbai) to London, via Delhi, Beirut, and Geneva. On the morning of 24 January 1966 at 8:02 CET, on approach to Geneva, the Boeing 707-437 operating the flight accidentally crashed into Mont Blanc in France, killing all 117 people on board. Among the victims was Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the founder and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India.

The crash occurred just a few hundred feet away from where an Air India Lockheed 749 Constellation operating as Air India Flight 245 while on a charter flight, had crashed in 1950.^[1]