Air India Flight 855 was a scheduled passenger flight that crashed during the evening of New Year 's Day 1978 about off the coast of Bandra , Bombay ( now Mumbai ) . All 213 passengers and crew on board were killed . The crash is believed to have been caused by the captain having become spatially disoriented after the failure of one of the flight instruments in the cockpit . It was Air India 's deadliest aircraft crash until the bombing of Flight 182 in 1985 . It was also the deadliest aviation accident in India until the Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision in 1996 . , Flight 855 is still the second deadliest aircraft crash in both of these categories
Flight 182
Air India Flight 182
Air India Flight 855