Momentarily a clicking sound of a transit button came over their headsets and, as they watched the screen, the Air India radar return suddenly vanished. The time was 07.14;01hrs GMT. Unknown to the controllers, Flight 182 had disintegrated in mid-air. The tail section aft of the wings broke off, and as the aircraft plummeted towards the ocean the wings and engines detached and fell in a shower of twisted metal into the sea. In a moment Kanishka was gone. There was no warning and no `May day' call: Flight 182 simply disappeared. With contact lost the controllers, alarmed by the circumstances, requested other flights to call Air India, but to no avail. By 07.30hrs it became obvious that the problem was serious and an emergency was declared. The emergency services were mobilised and shipping in the "area of 51°N 15°W was alerted. The Irish Navy vessel, Le Aisling, with cargo ships in the region, among them the Laurentian Forest, Ali Baba, Kongsteift and West Atlantic, converged on the location of the crash. By 09.13hrs a radio report from the Laurentian Forest confirmed the worst fears as wreckage and bodies were found floating on the surface. There were no survivors; all 329 people aboard had perished. The accident proved to be the worst aviation disaster over sea, and at the time the third worst disaster in aviation history.
An accident co-ordination centre was set up in Cork and floating wreckage and bodies recovered from the sea were taken to the Irish port. In the days that followed the accident, about 50% of the aircraft's total structure was retrieved from the sea's surface and 131 victims of the crash were brought ashore. A team of pathologists was organised to perform autopsies and arrangements were made to fly in relatives to identify the next of kin. The vessel Guardline Locator from the UK, with sophisticated sonar equipment aboard, and the French cable laying vessel the Leon Thevenin, with its robot mini-sub Scarab, were dispatched to locate the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) boxes. The batteries of the acoustic beacons attached to the recorders would survive for a maximum of only 30 days. The boxes would he difficult to find and it was imperative the search was commenced quickly. By 4 July, the Gardline Locator, equipment had detected signals on the sea bed and on 9 July the CVR was pin-pointed and raised to the surface by the Scarab. The next day the FDR was located and recovered. It was a remarkable achievement. The two boxes were brought ashore and dispatched to India for analysis
An accident co-ordination centre was set up in Cork and floating wreckage and bodies recovered from the sea were taken to the Irish port. In the days that followed the accident, about 50% of the aircraft's total structure was retrieved from the sea's surface and 131 victims of the crash were brought ashore. A team of pathologists was organised to perform autopsies and arrangements were made to fly in relatives to identify the next of kin. The vessel Guardline Locator from the UK, with sophisticated sonar equipment aboard, and the French cable laying vessel the Leon Thevenin, with its robot mini-sub Scarab, were dispatched to locate the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) boxes. The batteries of the acoustic beacons attached to the recorders would survive for a maximum of only 30 days. The boxes would he difficult to find and it was imperative the search was commenced quickly. By 4 July, the Gardline Locator, equipment had detected signals on the sea bed and on 9 July the CVR was pin-pointed and raised to the surface by the Scarab. The next day the FDR was located and recovered. It was a remarkable achievement. The two boxes were brought ashore and dispatched to India for analysis
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