All 48 Perish: Air India Crash on Mont Blanc

Air India Flight 245 slammed into Mont Blanc while descending toward Geneva Airport through heavy cloud cover, killing all 48 people aboard. The crash exposed dangerous gaps in instrument approach procedures for alpine airfields and prompted stricter navigation protocols across European mountain corridors. The accident occurred on November 3, 1950, when the Lockheed Constellation aircraft was approaching Geneva from the south, flying a route that required crossing the Alps at a point where Mont Blanc, Western Europe's highest peak at 4,808 meters, posed a lethal obstacle in poor visibility. The crew apparently descended to their approach altitude prematurely, placing the aircraft at 4,000 meters while Mont Blanc rose 800 meters above them, invisible in the clouds. The aircraft struck the mountain's southern face near the Rochers de la Tournette at approximately 4,670 meters. All 48 people aboard, including a prominent Indian nuclear physicist en route to a conference, were killed instantly. The wreckage was scattered across the glacier and proved extremely difficult to recover due to the altitude and terrain. Pieces of the aircraft and personal effects of the victims continued to emerge from the melting glacier for decades, with luggage and human remains appearing as recently as 2012. The crash led to immediate revisions in the approach procedures for Geneva Airport, which sits in a valley surrounded by some of the highest mountains in Europe. Standard instrument approach routes were redesigned to keep aircraft well clear of alpine terrain, and minimum safe altitudes on approach segments were increased. A second Air India aircraft crashed into Mont Blanc in 1966, killing all 117 aboard, demonstrating that the mountain corridor remained dangerous despite the procedural changes.