Disasters Two More Strikes for Terrorists?

By Pico Iyer

At 8:07 a.m. Sunday morning, the crew of Air India Flight 182 made a routine call to the control tower at Ireland's Shannon Airport. The flight, which originated in Toronto, was going just as planned. The plane was cruising at 33,000 feet above the North Atlantic, about 120 miles southwest of the Irish coast. The tower gave clearance to proceed to London's Heathrow Airport for refueling, and the crew promised to report back before landing. Then, just six minutes later, the Boeing 747 suddenly disappeared from radar screens. "One second it was there, and the next it was gone," said one Shannon air trafficker. "We are totally baffled." Less than two hours later, a merchant vessel in the area reported that uninflated life vests and bodies were scattered across the gray sea. All 307 passengers and 22 crew members were feared dead.

It was the third worst airline disaster in history, exceeded only by the 1977 collision of KLM and Pan American 747s in the Spanish Canary Islands that killed 582, and the 1974 crash of a Turkish DC-10 near Paris that left 345 dead. More alarmingly, however, the sudden and inexplicable plunge of the Air India craft had the earmarks of terrorism. "It is most likely a bomb," said Mike Ramsden, editor in chief of the aviation magazine Flight International. "A bomb is the most likely reason for a catastrophe, so sudden and complete, to an aircraft with a very fine safety record." Added a high-ranking U.S. Air Force intelligence officer: "It looks like a terrorist act, but it is too early to say."

That unsettling possibility gained further credibility as details emerged about an explosion at the Tokyo international airport less than an hour before the Air India crash. As baggage from Canadian Pacific Flight 003 was being unloaded, a bomb suddenly ripped both the door and roof off the freight container, sending clothes and suitcases flying. The explosion killed two airport workers and injured four others. Had the flight not arrived from Vancouver a quarter-hour early, the bomb might have gone off while the 747, which carried 374 passengers and 16 crew members, was over the ocean.

After the Air India plane dropped off radar screens, a full-scale rescue mission was carried out at the scene of the crash. Within half an hour of the plane's disappearance, centers had been set up in Britain and Ireland to coordinate a giant rescue team that included 14 helicopters, four reconnaissance planes and a fleet of more than a dozen military and merchant vessels. By early evening the workers had picked up 144 bodies and airlifted them to Cork, where Irish authorities set up a special mortuary. The possibility of anyone's surviving was remote. One rescue spotter likened the body-strewn scene to "a battlefield."

Meanwhile, evidence of foul play mounted. The Air India flight, whose final ) destination was Bombay, had stopped in Montreal to pick up passengers. While it was taking on baggage there, dogs trained to sniff out explosives began barking. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police subsequently confiscated three "suspicious" pieces of luggage after electronic scanners detected metal inside the bags. The luggage was examined, but no explosives were found.

The debris at sea also supported suspicions that the Air India crash had been triggered by a bomb. The presence of uninflated life rafts and the emergence of some bodies still wearing airline slippers, suggested that the passengers, most of them of Indian descent and many of them children, had been taken by surprise. "Explosion is considered a possibility," said Ashok Gehlot, India's Minister of State for Civil Aviation, "in view of the fact that the wreckage is spread over a wide area. Sabotage is a distinct possibility."

Short of a bomb, indeed, experts were hard put to explain the disaster. Even if the pilot had lost all four engines simultaneously, aviation sources pointed out, he could have sent a distress signal and possibly continued to glide for 30 minutes. And even if his power source had been cut, he could have used a backup system. In addition, officials observed, sudden disappearances from radar and crashes at sea are very rare. Never before has a commercial jet crossing the Atlantic plunged into the ocean.

Who would have wished to plant a bomb on the flight? No group rushed to claim responsibility. "We have had threats of hijacking made to our headquarters in India and elsewhere," said Francis D'gama, regional manager for Air India in Britain. "These have been made for some time." Whoever was responsible may have been seeking maximum publicity: the plane was two hours behind schedule when it crashed, and a time-release bomb might have been designed to go off during the stop at London, where there is a large international press corps. The motives for the explosion in Japan were more mysterious; again, no one immediately claimed responsibility. As this week began, the International Air Transport Association called an emergency meeting in Montreal. Meanwhile, the international police organization Interpol was reportedly investigating both disasters and possible links between them.

With reporting by Christopher Ogden and James Shepherd/London