Air India Flight 182

Introduction
Air India Flight 182 was a passenger flight from Canada to India with stopovers in London and Dehli. The aircraft was bombed, killing everyone on board.

Pilots
Captain Hanse Narendra, First Officer Satwinder Bhinder and Flight Engineer Dara Dumasia are in the cockpit, and they had nothing to do with the accident.

The (Almost) Normal Flight
Air India Flight 182 took off from Quebec nearly 2 hours late, and this was due to the fact that the flight had a 'fifth pod' attached. What this refers to is that there was a bonus engine on the left wing that wasn't running. The aircraft had a system on the wing for strapping engines on, and is used for transporting them large distances without taking up space in the cargo hold. This factor, again, had nothing to do with the accident. The flight was approaching Ireland, and was going to pass over it to land in London Heathrow. The flight runs normally, and then, it vanishes from radar screens. They won't reply to anything, and less than half-an-hour later, rescue boats are on their way. But once they arrive, they realise the only thing to rescue are plane parts and corpses. All 329 on board are dead, and now all that can be done is look for answers.

Investigation
For an aircraft to vanish off radar screens without any warning is very suspicious, and what makes it even more suspicious is what happened 55 minutes before it.

1985 Narita International Airport bombing
In the afternoon of June 23, Narita International Airport, Narita, Japan, business is usual. When out of the blue, the sound of an explosion rips through the airport. The explosion was from Air India Flight 301, and it killed the 2 baggage handlers who were loading it onto the plane. 4 others were injured, and this was thought to be a single attack. But after investigators looked at the similarities between the Air India Flight 182 and the Narita Bombing, they agreed that these two incidents were connected.

After further investigation, Air India Flight 182 was announced to be an intentional act of terrorism. Now that they had found that it was a bomb, they had to find the bomber.

The Bomber
When looking at operations before the accident, investigators found something intriguing. And after looking into it further, this is the story they came up with:

A man calling himself Manjit Singh had an argument with an agent in Vancouver when checking his bag into Canadian Pacific Airlines Flight 60, which he wanted passed over to Air India Flight 182. The agent told him that he couldn't as his ticket didn't state that, but eventually she gave in and told him that he must tell the Air India agent when he arrives in Toronto at the end of the flight. At 9:18 a.m. Canada time, Canadian Pacific Airlines Flight 60 departed from Vancouver and flew to Toronto without Singh. Once the bag arrived at Toronto, it went under further scrutiny. It was inspected by a trainee who was told that if the scanning device made a specific noise, that meant it was flammable or a bomb. But when the bag with the bomb was scanned, it made a noise different to the one specified. The trainee shrugged it off and let it aboard the flight. The man who checked the bag in has never been found. The group who organised the attack, however, has. The Khalistan movement was blamed for the accident, and Inderjit Singh Reyat pleaded guilty to the bombing in 2003.

Aftermath
This incident spawned a new rule, that when a person checks a bag into a plane, they must get on. This rule was not at very high scrutiny until 1988, when Pan Am Flight 103 crashed into the town of Lockerbie, Scotland for the same reason as this accident. The rule then caused an accident in 1996, when TWA Flight 800 crashed near Long Island, New York. This is the 7th worst plane crash in history, and will never be forgotten.