The Pilot Who Didn't Know Where He Was | The Crash Of Alitalia Flight 771

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This is the story of Alitalia flight 771. On the 7th of july 1962 Flight 771 was flying from Kingsford smith airport in sydney to Rome's fiumicino airport. Since this was the 1960s it had a bunch of stops in between. It had stops in Darwin Australia, Don mueang bangkok, Bombay India, Karachi Pakistan and Tehran iran. It was Late in the day on the 7th of july the plane was approaching Bombay india,the plane was in touch with bombay center, they were currently at 36,000 feet and they expected to be on the ground at bombay by 6:45 PM GMT or 12:15 am.As they passed the city of aurangabad at 6:26 PM GMT or 11:56 pm local time they were in contact with bombay approach and were also descending down to 20,000 feet. The crew said “ Leaving flight level 350 down to 200, bombay at 45”. ATC gave them the details for the airport including the QNH values. The crew expressed their interest to land on runway 27.
As the plane approached the airport they got down to 5000 feet on its way to their assigned altitude of 4000 feet.
ATC wanted to know if flight 771 would be making a straight in approach or if they wanted to do a 360 degree orbit.

ATC asked "771 request your intentions Are you coming straight in from the outer marker for landing runway two seven or making a three sixty over the outer marker then reporting leaving outer marker inbound over?" Alitalia 771 was cleared to do a 360 over the outer marker, they now had to let ATC know when they were done with the 360 and when they were heading back towards the airport.

ATC confirmed what they had just discussed “"Roger understand you will be making a three sixty over the outer marker, Report leaving outer marker while proceeding making a three sixty” Alitalia flight 771 replied with roger will do alitalia flight 771. This was the last time that they heard from the airplane. After ATC didn't hear back from the plane a search and rescue mission was started they found the wreck of the plane on a hill called davandyachi near the airport. None of the 94 occupants made it.

The crash site told the investigators quite a bit, the plane was on a heading of 240 when it struck the mountain and it was in level flight, the first officer's altimeter was recovered and it showed the correct altitude that the plane was at. In addition to that all of the plane was at the crash site, all major parts were accounted for.

The investigators talked to the flight dispatcher at bangkok, the flight dispatcher prepared an operational flight plan or a company flight plan. Now he says that he handed the flight plan over to the pilot in command but the pilot in command had not signed for the document to show his acceptance. As per the Alitalia operations manual this was compulsory. So with no signature we have no way of knowing if the pilots actually had the flight plan prepared but the flight dispatcher, this flight plan was not recovered from the wreck. The chief pilot of alitalia admitted that a lot of pilots did not consider the company flight plan to be absolutely essential, sure they were supposed to have it onboard but a lot of pilots didn't.

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