Flight 763 Saudi Arabian Airlines

Flight SV763 was a flight chartered by the Saudi Arabian Airlines on a Boeing 747 to carry out the connection between Delhi, in India, and Dhahran, in Saudi Arabia. The November 12th 1996, approximately 10 minutes after its takeoff the plane struck an airfreighter Iliouchine 76 of the Kazakhstan Airlines coming from Chymkent, with the Kazakhstan, and bound for Delhi. The accident killed the 312 occupants of the 747 and the 37 occupants of Iliouchine.

Plane

The plane was a Boeing 747-168B builds in 1982 under serial number 22748/555 and registered HZ-AIH. At the time of the accident it was propelled by 4 engines Rolls Royce RB211-524C2.

Crew

the commander
the copilot
the Personal engineer officer
of cabin : 20 people

Circumstances of the accident

Flight 763 took off of the international aéeroport Indira Gandhi of Delhi at 18:32, local time, on November 12th, 1996. The crew followed the starting procedure SID Parvi to join the air lane G452. He contacted air control to announce his passage to the Niveau of flight 100 (10000 feet). It was authorized to continue the rise up to the level of flight 140 (14000 feet) then to maintain this level until new order because a plane (Iliouchine 76, flight 1907 of Kazakhstan Airlines) arrived on the same trajectory in opposite direction and descent. Little time after, the flight 1907 announced its arrival on the level 150 which had been assigned to him by the controller. The controller took delivery of the message: “Received. Maintain 150. Traffic direction opposed to your 12 hours, one 747 of Saudi, 14 miles in front. Announce the visual contact. ” The Kazakh crew answered by asking for the distance of separation. The controller repeated “14 miles, 1907”. No answer not coming, it repeated its warning: “Traffic with 13 miles, level 140”. It was the last radio operator contact. The two planes had been just struck in full sky, with 18:40, approximately 14000 feet (4200 meters) of altitude.

Assessment

Surviving: none.
Dead: 349 (289 passengers and 23 team members of the flight 763,27 passengers and 10 team members of the flight 1907).
the plane is destroyed.

Inquire

The survey was carried out by the Indian authorities. The block boxes of the two planes were found and analyzed. It appeared quickly that the accident was due to an human error of the pilot of Iliouchine which had not respected the altitude of 15000 feet which had been assigned to him. Instead of that it was gone down initially to 14500 feet then with approximately 14000 in little later. It also appeared that the pilot did not speak English and relayed the communications with his radio operator operator. The Kazakh authorities declared that the plane had crossed an area of turbulence due to Cumulus. The presence of these turbulences was contradicted by the trade unions of air-traffic controllers Indian who was based on the weather reports/ratios while confirming that the collision had taken place in a cloud. The final report concludes with the error from the Kazakh pilot.

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