The Pilots Who Didn't Care About The Rules | Indian Airlines Flight 440

This is the story of indian airlines flight 440, do note that its indian airlines not air india. Indian airlines was a state owned carrier in india that operated closely with air india. It was a mostly domestic airline with a couple of international flights to neighboring countries. It left the heavy lifting of international flights to air india and focused on the domestic market. I do have to say though indian airlines has one of my retro liveries. Only second to the KLM livery on the 747. Like I said before indian airlines were more domestic flights and this was no different on the 13th of november 1993. Flight 440 would be flying from madras to Hyderabad, just in case they werent able to land at hyderabad madras was designated as their alternate airport. This meant that they would have to come back to where they started but hey its better than the alternative. With that flight 440 took off from madras with 262 people on board. The A300 took off into the skies of southern india and pointed her nose towards hyderabad. 50 minutes after takeoff the plane got into contact with hyderabad tower, the controller first cleared the plane to descend to 28000 feet and then when the plane was at 97 DME from the airport it was cleared to descend to 10000 feet. The visiubility at hyderabad at this point was 2000 meters or 6561 feet. This quickly dropped by 500 meters to 1500 meters or 4921 feet. But this was still more than enough visibility for the plane to land so they pushed on. When the plane was at 25 DME they descended all the way down to 4400 feet. At this point the controller started to position the plane for an ILS approach to runway 27. But by this point the visibility had dropped all the way to 500 meters or 1640 feet. The pilots wanted to descend but the controller did not let that happen as the visibility was too bad. The pilots still wanted to shoot an approach. Within a couple of minutes the plane was at the HY locator and the pilots asked if they could descend now. The controller refused again, with the visibility being what it was it was too dangerous. Then the plane got on the localizer and the pilots asked if they could descend now. The answer was still no from the controller. The pilots now asked for an updated RVR value. RVR or the runway visual range which is the distance a pilot can see down the runway. The controller let the pilots know that they had sent out a car to measure the RVR and that they should have the value momentarily. The RVR came in at 240 meters which is 787 feet. The controller told them that they could descend down to their minimum descent altitude and then see if they could sight the runway. The A300 came down through the fog but no runway the pilots let the controller know that they were going around. The controller now needed to know what the pilots wanted to do? Did they want to stick around the airport or did they want to head back to madras? The controller let the pilots know that the weather wasnt expected to improve for the next half an hour. The pilots let the controllers know that they were holding at the HHY marker not because they wanted to try again but because they were having issues with the flaps. As they held over the airport the weather did not get better and so they told the controller that they were headed back to madras. As they were on their way out the pilots asked the controller about the weather again. This time around it had gotten worse it would take an hour for the weather to get back up to 1500 meters. The pilots then asked the controllers if they could check the visibility at an airbase nearby the airbase had even worse visibility than Hyderabad. The reason that the pilots were trying their best to land at hyderabad was because of the fact that their flaps had been jammed in the extended position. This meant that the plane could only cruise at a lower speed of 165 knots. More importantly the lowered flaps massively increased the drag on the plane. This meant that there was a very real possibility that this plane with 262 people onboard would not be able to make it back to madras. The controller knew all of this and asked flight 440 if he could make it to Madras with the endurance that they had. The reply from the pilot was just two words “Will Try”. As the plane got further and further away from hyderabad the controller kept checking in with the pilots, the controller asked “will you be able to reach madras" and the pilot replied with affirmative.