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Revision as of 05:55, 22 December 2003 by WhisperToMe (talk | contribs) (+More info)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Air India Flight 182 was a flight that flew on a Lester B. Pearson International Airport, Mississauga, Ontario - Mirabel International Airport, Montreal, Quebec - London Heathrow Airport, London - Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi - Sahar International Airport (now Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport), Bombay (now Mumbai) route. The flight was bombed on the Montreal to London leg on June 23, 1985, killing all on board.
On June 22, 1985, at 1330 Greenwich Mean Time, a man named Mr. Singh calls Canadian Pacific Airlines reservations to book a flight from Vancouver International Airport in Vancouver, British Columbia to Toronto, Ontario. He wants his suitcase transferred to Flight 182. The agents first book him as unconfirmed, but they later relent.
At 1550 GMT, Mr. Singh checks into Vancouver for CP Air Flight 60 to Toronto. An agent named Jeannie Adams checks in a piece of luggage bound for the Air India flight.
At 1618, the CP Air flight to Toronto departs without Mr. Singh.
It is unknown when a man named L. Singh checked in Vancouver into CP Air Flight 3 to New Tokyo International Airport in Narita, Japan, near Tokyo. Jeannie Adams also checked in his bag. His bag was directed to Air India Flight 301, which flew from Narita to Don Muang International Airport in Bangkok, Thailand. L. Singh is assigned seat 38H.
At 2022 GMT, CP Air Flight 60 arrived in Toronto 12 minutes late. Some of the passengers and baggage, including the baggage Mr. Singh checked in, are transferred to the Air India flight.
At 2037 GMT, Flight 3 departed Vancouver without L. Singh on board.
At 0015 GMT on June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 departed Toronto for Montreal Mirabel 1 Hour and 40 Minutes late. The flight arrived at Mirabel at 0100 GMT.
At 0541, CP Air 3 arrived at Tokyo 14 minutes early. The luggage that came from CP Air 3 exploded as it was being transferred to Air India Flight 301, killing two of the baggage handlers in Narita and injuring four other people. Air India Flight 301 would leave Narita at 805 GMT and would arrive in Thailand unscathed.
At 715 GMT, Air India Flight 182, which had departed Mirabel bound for London, disappeared.
The second piece of baggage, a dark-brown, hard sided Samsonite suitcase wound up on Flight 182 and came with it when it departed Toronto. The bomb inside detonated in the forward cargo hold, 55 minutes after the Narita bomb went off, at 715 GMT. The Boeing 747 on the route was blown up mid-flight in a terrorist attack led by Sikh nationalists. The bomb went off as the aircraft was over the south-west Irish coast 180 miles offshore of Cork, Ireland. The plane was supposed to arrive at 815 GMT.
It killed 329 passengers, mostly Canadians, and was the largest terrorist attack ever committed against Canadian citizens. Some of the dead had survived the explosion and the fall from 31,000 feet but drowned in the Atlantic Ocean.
The subsequent Canadian investigation into the attack was notoriously slow, and was dogged by many charges of corruption and incompetence. Only in 2002 did the trial formally begin, and as of this writing is still ongoing.
The main suspect in the bombing was exiled Sihk nationalist leader Talwinder Singh Parmer who had allegedly plotted the attack while living in the Canadian province of British Columbia. He had been under longtime survielance of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police due to suspicious activities.
In 1992, Parmer was killed by police in Punjab, India, and was never formally brought to trial for his role in the 329 deaths.
The trial is now currently focusing around Inderjit Singh Reyat who was the alleged bomb-maker of the device that blew up flight 182. In 2003 he pled guilty to the murder of the 329 passengers.