Air India 182, 23 June 1985

On 23 June 1985, Air India Flight 182 was destroyed by a bomb off the coast of Ireland. All 329 people aboard died — 307 passengers and 22 crew.

The aircraft was VT-EFO, a Boeing 747-237B named Emperor Kanishka, flying Toronto to Mumbai via Montreal and London.

It remained the deadliest act of aviation terrorism anywhere in the world until 11 September 2001, and it is the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history.

What happened

A bomb, concealed in a Sanyo stereo tuner inside a checked suitcase, detonated in the forward cargo hold at altitude. The aircraft broke up and fell into the Atlantic south-west of Ireland.

The attack was carried out by members of the Khalistani separatist group Babbar Khalsa, in retaliation for the Indian Army’s Operation Blue Star at the Golden Temple in 1984 and the anti-Sikh violence that followed.

The failures behind it

This was not a case of an unforeseeable threat. The investigation found a chain of missed opportunities:

• Indian intelligence had warned of bomb threats against Air India.
• Canadian security services had the suspects under surveillance.
• An explosives detector at Toronto airport was not working.
• The suitcase travelled as unaccompanied baggage — checked onto an aircraft its owner did not board.

That last point is the one with the longest reach. The same day, a second bomb from the same plot exploded in baggage at Narita, killing two handlers.

What changed

Baggage reconciliation — the rule that a checked bag flies only if its passenger is aboard — became a foundation of international aviation security, reinforced three years later by Pan Am 103, where the same principle had again failed.

Screening of hold baggage was overhauled, and the case became a long-running study in the cost of intelligence agencies not sharing what they know.

The Canadian inquiry that eventually reported on it was scathing about what it called a cascading series of errors across multiple agencies.

Remembering it

For many years the attack was treated in Canada as a foreign tragedy rather than a Canadian one, despite the great majority of those killed being Canadian citizens. That framing has since been formally acknowledged as wrong.

Related

• All 747 accidents
• Pan Am 103
• The 747-200