Widerøe Flight 710
1988 passenger plane crash on the island of Torghatten, Brønnøy, Norway / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Widerøe Flight 710, commonly known as the Torghatten Accident (Norwegian: Torghatten-ulykken), was a controlled flight into terrain into the mountain of Torghatten in Brønnøy, Norway. The Widerøe-operated de Havilland Canada Dash 7 crashed on 6 May 1988 at 20:29:30 during approach to Brønnøysund Airport, Brønnøy. All thirty-six people on board LN-WFN were killed; the crash remains the deadliest accident involving the Dash 7 and the deadliest in Northern Norway. The direct cause of the accident was that the aircraft had descended from 500 to 170 meters (1,640 to 560 ft) at 8 NM (15 km; 9.2 mi) instead of 4 NM (7.4 km; 4.6 mi) from the airport.
Accident | |
---|---|
Date | 6 May 1988 |
Summary | Controlled flight into terrain caused by pilot error and fog |
Site | Torghatten, Brønnøy, Norway 65°23′36″N 12°05′12″E |
Aircraft | |
Aircraft type | de Havilland Canada Dash 7 Series 102 |
Operator | Widerøe |
Registration | LN-WFN |
Flight origin | Trondheim Airport, Værnes |
Last stopover | Namsos Airport, Høknesøra |
Destination | Bodø Airport via Brønnøysund Airport, Brønnøy and Sandnessjøen Airport, Stokka |
Occupants | 36 |
Passengers | 33 |
Crew | 3 |
Fatalities | 36 |
Survivors | 0 |
An investigation found several shortcomings in the airline's operating procedures, in particular lack of proper cockpit communication and mutual control of the descent and approach plans. This was in part caused by the airline electing to not follow the sterile cockpit rule and that a passenger was sitting in a cockpit jump seat during the flight. The investigating commission also found lack of proper pilot training in the airline. Flight 710 was the second of four Widerøe accidents between 1982 and 1993, all of which revealed shortcomings in the airline's operations and internal control.