Garuda Indonesian Airways Flight 892

The aircraft involved in the accident was a Convair CV-990-30A-5 jet airliner powered by four General Electric CJ805-23B turbofan engines with registration PK-GJA. The 1961-built aircraft had serial number 30-10-3 and was the third Convair 990 produced,[2] initially destined for American Airlines. Formerly used as one of the testbed aircraft to certify the Convair 990 type, the aircraft was later converted to the Convair 990A variant afterward. The aircraft was configured to carry up to 99 passengers and was named Pajajaran after the capital city of the Sunda Kingdom.[3][4] Garuda Indonesian Airways took delivery of the aircraft as the last of three ordered on 24 January 1964.[5]

Garuda Indonesian Airways Flight 892 arrived at Bombay's Santacruz Airport at 01:45 a.m. local time (08:15 p.m. UTC, 27 May). Having originated in Jakarta with two preceding stopovers in Singapore and Bangkok, the flight was part of the airline's Jakarta–Singapore–Bangkok–Bombay–Karachi–Cairo–Rome–Amsterdam milk run service.[6] The flight made the stopover in Bombay to pick up more passengers, change operating crew members, and refuel the aircraft before continuing with the flight's next segment to Karachi. Eleven passengers were supposed to board the flight in Bombay, but five passengers canceled their tickets at the last moment, leaving the remaining six to board the flight. Weather conditions at Santacruz Airport reportedly were normal and without strong winds at the time of the flight's departure from Bombay to Karachi with 15 passengers and 14 crew on board.[7]

In the hours after the accident, several representatives from the Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation arrived at the crash site and conducted a preliminary investigation.[7] A joint team from Indonesia, which included representatives from the Indonesian Directorate of Civil Aviation, Garuda Indonesian Airways, and Lufthansa, was dispatched to Bombay to join the investigation.[10] They arrived in Bombay the following morning. The search for the aircraft's flight recorder began the day after the arrival of the Indonesian team at the crash site.[8]

The cause of the accident remains unknown to date, even though there was a court of inquiry to determine it. The court of inquiry was led by Y. S. Tambe, a retired Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, and the accident report reportedly would be completed by January 1970.[14] However, the error of the ground staff at Santacruz Airport, which refueled the jet airliner with avgas instead of kerosene-based avtur, is presumed as the probable cause of the accident. The alleged consequence is that all of the aircraft's four engines experienced a partial or total failure during the climbout, causing the pilots to lose control of the aircraft. The aircraft then entered a nosedive until it eventually crashed in an almost vertical attitude.[1][15]

The day following the accident, Garuda Indonesian Airways grounded the remaining two Convair 990A aircraft in its fleet and suspended the Jakarta to Amsterdam and vice versa milk run service.[8][16] The latter would later get reinstated, but the operating aircraft for the flight got replaced by Douglas DC-8 on lease from KLM. The two Convair 990A aircraft were, in turn, relegated to fly on Indonesian domestic and Asian international routes until the airline eventually phased out the type in 1973.[4]

President Suharto of Indonesia sent an aircraft from Garuda Indonesian Airways to repatriate all deceased Indonesians in the accident. Inside each coffin of the Indonesian victims, stones collected from the crash site were also placed. Most of the deceased Indonesian passengers were buried in public cemeteries, while the wife of the health minister and the entire crew members were buried in a heroes' cemetery.[11]

• List of Garuda Indonesia incidents and accidents