How Turning The Wrong Knob Killed 92 People | Indian Airlines Flight 605

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This is the story of Indian airlines flight 605. On the 14th of february 1990 an indian airlines A320 was making the trip from Bombay to bangalore india. This was the planes third flight of the day and it had 146 occupants onboard, they were flying the brand new A320. One of the most sophisticated planes in the sky, even today.The since the plane was brand new this plane had two captains on board. In the right hand seat was the captain in training, he was in the process of getting familiarized with the plane and the route, the captain in training was very experienced but he only had 68 hours on the a320. In the left hand seat was the supervising captain, he had about 250 hours on the a320 and he had been to france to learn all the ins and outs of the a320. With two captains on board The plane took off from bombay at about 12 pm, it was delayed by about an hour. But once the plane was up in the air it was smooth sailing. The plane climbed to 33000 feet. As the plane settled into its cruise the pilots got in touch with bangalore center. They had to let the controllers know about their estimated arrival time at bangalore and with the way things were looking the pilots estimated to enter the madras Flight information region by 12:36 pm and to reach bangalore by 1:04 pm. They also talked about the weather at bangalore, there were clouds at 2000 feet over the airport and winds were at 5 knots and 10 kilometers of visibility, pretty good weather. By 12:44 pm they were getting quite close and the pilots requested permission to descend. Air traffic control cleared them down to 11,000 feet as they got closer to the airport.As the plane descended the pilots turned their attention the approach that they'd be flying today. They planned to use a VOR DME approach to land on runway 09. This approach required them to descend from 6000 feet at 11 miles from the airport and to descend from 4500 feet at 7 miles from the airport. They werent allowed to go below 3280 feet without sighting the runway. It was 12:53 pm and bangalore ATC had the plane on radar, as the plane kept descending the pilots configured the plane for the landing. It was one pm and the plane was 7 miles away, flight 605 got transferred to the bangalore tower.

In the cockpit the final checks were being carried out. The captain in training asked the cabin crew to prepare for landing. If things went right They'd be on the ground in a few minutes. But the plane was a bit above the glide slope, it wasn't so high above the glide slope that it jeopardized the landing, but it's something that the pilots had to contend with during the final approach. To fix this the captain in training asked the other pilot to set the vertical speed to 1000 feet, he was essentially telling the autopilot to descend at 10000 feet per minute, this was a steeper descent than usual and so that would allow them to get back on the correct glide path. A bit later the captain in training calls for a descent rate of 700 feet per minute. They had now intercepted the correct glideslope, therefore they didnt need to descend as fast.

From the cabin this looked like any other landing, nothing made you think that anything was out of the ordinary. But in the cockpit the pilots knew that something was off, the plane was well below the glideslope. The automated radio altimeter kept calling out their altitude, 400, 300 200. Ideally when you hear these callouts you should be very close to the runway but the safety of bangalore's runway was still far away.

Flight 605 ran out of time, the plane touched down on a golf course near the airport. The first touchdown was soft enough that most passengers thought that they had landed on the runway but the second impact was much more severe, the plane impacted a 12 foot high embankment