Linate Airport disaster
| File:Linate.jpg SAS Flight 686 after crashing into hangar | |
| Occurrence | |
|---|---|
| Date | October 8 2001 |
| Summary | Runway collision |
| Site | Milan, Italy |
| Aircraft type | McDonnell-Douglas MD-87 |
| Aircraft name | Lage Viking |
| Operator | Scandinavian Airlines |
| Registration | SE-DMA |
| Passengers | 104 |
| Crew | 6 |
| Fatalities | 118 (4 on ground) |
| Injuries | 4 (all on ground) |
| Survivors | 0 |
The Linate Airport disaster occurred on October 8, 2001, at Linate Airport in Milan, Italy.
Scandinavian Airlines Flight SK686, an MD-87 plane carrying 110 people and headed to Copenhagen, collided on take-off with a Cessna Citation II (code D-IEVX) business jet carrying 4, planning to go to Paris. There were no survivors. The MD-87 crashed into a baggage-handling building, where an additional four people were killed and four others were injured.
Accident
The accident occurred in thick fog, with visibility reduced to less than 200 m. Investigations showed that the control tower's instructions to the Cessna Citation had not been followed correctly, and the plane had erroneously moved onto the main runway. The two planes collided at 08:10AM, with the SAS MD-87 moving at about 270 km/h. All four in the Cessna were killed on impact. The MD-87 lost its right engine; the pilot, Joakim Gustafsson from Sweden, attempted to take off, reaching an altitude of approximately 12 m (35 ft). The remaining engine lost some thrust due to debris ingestion, and the plane, having lost the starboard landing gear, came down. Gustafsson applied thrust reverser and brakes, and tried to guide the plane through its control surfaces. The manoeuver was judged so skillful that it is now incorporated into SAS technical manuals [citation needed]. All this was insufficient to halt the jet's momentum, and it crashed into a luggage hangar located near the runway's end, at a speed of 250.7 km/h. In the impact, all the MD-87's crew and passengers were killed. The crash and subsequent fire killed four ground personnel in the hangar, and injured four more.
Causes
The accident occurred less than a month after the September 11, 2001 attacks and the day after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began, which left many people thinking that the disaster was a terrorist attack. This possibility was ruled out by the investigations that followed.
Linate Airport was operating without a functioning ground radar system at the time, despite having had a system delivered some years beforehand, which had not been fully installed. The new system finally came online a few months later. Guidance signs along the taxiways were later found to not meet regulations; after mistakenly turning onto the R6 taxiway that led to the runway, there were no signs by which the Cessna pilots could recognize where they were. When they stopped at a taxiway stop-marking and correctly reported its identifier (S4), the ground controller disregarded this identification because it was not on his maps and was unknown to him. Furthermore, both pilots of D-IEVX were not certified for landings with visibility less than 550 m, but had landed at the airport anyway a few minutes before the disaster.
On April 16 2004, a Milan court found four persons guilty for the disaster. Airport director Vincenzo Fusco and air-traffic controller Paolo Zacchetti were both sentenced to eight years in prison; six and a half years-long sentences were given to Sandro Gualano, former head of the air traffic controllers' agency, and Francesco Federico, former head of the airport. In the Second Grade process (July 7, 2006), Fusco and Federico were discharged. Another four people were sentenced. The pardon law issued by Italian Parliament on july 29, 2006 reduced all convictions by three years.
Memorial
In March 2002 a forest containing 118 beeches called Bosco dei Faggi was inaugurated as a memorial to the victims in the Forlanini Park near the airport. A sculpture by the Swedish artist Christer Bording donated by SAS, called Infinity Pain, was placed in the centre of the forest. The disaster was a hard blow to the Swedish go-kart community as some of the country's most promising young drivers were on the flight after having attended an event in Milan. After the disaster, the Swedish national motorsports club started a memorial fund together with some of the relatives. The fund awards annual stipends to promising Swedish youth in go-kart[1].
See also
- Tenerife disaster
- Lists of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
- 2005 Logan Airport runway incursion
External links
- Agenzia Nazionale per la Sicurezza del Volo report
- Description of the accident at aviation-safety.net
- Looking back at Linate
- Italian TV report about the Linate Airport disaster Template:It icon
- Photographs of the accident
- Jets collide on Milan runway; 118 killed, USA Today
- Scores die in runway blaze, BBC
- SAS backs Linate over safety, CNN
- List of passengers on the SK flight