Charkhi Dadri mid Air Collision – November 12, 1996

A mid-air collision between a Kazakhstan flight and a Saudi flight, over Haryana in India, resulted in the world’s deadliest mid-air crash. It was responsible for the deaths of passengers and crew on both planes. The resultant safety measures made air corridors in the skies mandatory. The aircraft involved were Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 763 (SVA763), a Boeing 747-168B en route from New Delhi to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907, an Ilyushin Il-76TD en route from Shymkent, Kazakhstan, to New Delhi.

The Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision occurred on 12 November 1996 over the village of Charkhi Dadri, to the west of New Delhi, India. All 349 people on board both flights were killed, making it the world's deadliest mid-air collision and the third-deadliest aircraft accident in the history of aviation, behind only Japan Airlines Flight 123 and the Tenerife airport disaster.

The crash was investigated by the Lahoti Commission, headed by then-Delhi High Court judge Ramesh Chandra Lahoti. Depositions were taken from the Air Traffic Controllers Guild and the two airlines. The flight data recorders were decoded by Kazakhstani Airlines and Saudia under supervision of air crash investigators in Moscow and Farnborough, Hampshire, England, respectively.