Bodies in ocean after jet crash

Press, 24 June 1985, Page 1

Bodies in ocean after jet crash

NZPA-AP-Reuter Shannon Three bodies have been recovered from the Atlantic Ocean after an Air India Boeing 747 jet with 325 people on board crashed off the coast of Ireland last evening. The British Ministry of Defence reported there was no sign of survivors. The Ministry said that liferafts from the aircraft had been spotted in the sea but none of them were inflated. Radio contact with the plane, on a flight from Montreal to London, was lost at 8.15 a.m. local time, the officials said. Rescue services had been

alerted and military helicopters and planes were flying to the crash scene, 90 miles south-west of the Irish coast. Officials said alarm signals were picked up at the Shannon tracker station and emergency locater transmitter signals had been received after contact was lost. “We have a lot of aircraft out searching now” and helicopters as well, said a spokesman for the Royal Air Force from a base in Plymouth, West England. In London, a spokesman for Air India confirmed that flight Al 182 had disappeared. The plane had been scheduled to refuel at London’s Heathrow Airport be-

fore going on to Bombay, Heathrow officials said. A spokesman at Ireland’s regional air traffic control centre in Shannon, Mr Tony Doyle, said that the plane had been in normal contact with Shannon controllers and was cruising at 31,000 feet when it suddenly disappeared from the screens. A short time later, he said, two other planes in the area picked up an electronic distress signal, indicating the plane had gone down. An Air India spokesman said passengers were of mixed nationality. He had no further information. The spokesman said there were no reports of adverse weather in the crash area.