Authorities recovered wreckage scattered across a five‑mile debris field, still alight, near the village of Jagalgori. A court‑appointed inquiry, led by India’s civil aviation authorities, concluded the aircraft suffered catastrophic structural failure after flying into a thunder‑squall. Investigators determined the stresses of severe turbulence or over‑control during storm navigation exceeded the airframe’s design limits.
Flight data show the Comet was climbing to 7,500 ft when it disappeared from radar. Ground witnesses reported “an aircraft coming down in a blaze of fire” amid torrential downpours. Subsequent forensic examination revealed no evidence of sabotage, engine malfunction, lightning, defective material or workmanship. The failure was traced to physical stresses: either gusts within the thunderstorm or pilot inputs pushing control surfaces beyond structural tolerance.
The roster of passengers included 31 British nationals, three Americans, two Burmese and one Filipino. Among the deceased was Australian politician Trevor Oldham and his wife, mistakenly listed as British. The crew boasted experienced aviators: the captain logged 8,710 total flying hours, including 589 on the Comet; his first officer held 4,391 hours, 261 of them on type.
BOAC’s Comet fleet, the world’s first commercial jet airliners, had flown since May 1952. But within months of entering service, issues with unstable take‑offs prompted technical fixes to wing aerodynamics as safety concerns emerged. The Calcutta disaster marked the first fatal crash of the type.
Recommendations from the investigation included reviewing structural design criteria for flights through storms, enhancing pilot training to recognise load‑induced stresses, and evaluating modifications to control systems to improve “feel” during turbulent conditions.
The findings came amid global aviation safety scrutiny. Less than a year later, two further Comet disasters struck: Flight 781 disintegrated en route to London when metal fatigue around square windows triggered explosive decompression off the Italian coast on 10 January 1954; Flight 201, contracted through BOAC via South African Airways, broke apart above the Tyrrhenian Sea on 8 April 1954.
These tragedies prompted temporary grounding and extensive structural investigations. Testing by the Royal Aircraft Establishment revealed that stress concentrations at window and door corners could lead to fatigue cracking, well before anticipated fatigue thresholds. This led to redesigned fuselages with rounded windows and reinforced cabins. Designers also transitioned from a "safe life" to a "fail‑safe" structural philosophy, ensuring redundancy in case of local structural failure.
BOAC and De Havilland swiftly withdrew all Comets from service for review. The jet resumed limited operations only after a suite of modifications: strengthening pressurised fuselage, redesigning window geometry, installing stiffened skin panels and more robust control systems. Despite these improvements, public confidence had eroded; airlines cancelled outstanding orders and aviation regulators tightened international certification standards for pressurised jets.
The Calcutta accident had a decisive impact on commercial aviation safety. The investigation’s insight into storm‑induced structural loads and the limitations of early jet‑age airframe designs paved the way for updated certification standards, including mandatory full‑scale fatigue testing of new airliners.