Banat Air Flight 166

Banat Air Flight 166
An identical machine
Accident summary
Accident type	Stopped flow at takeoff due to icing and overloading
place	near Villafranca di Verona , Italy
date	December 13, 1995
Fatalities	49
Survivors	0
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Antonov An-24
operator	Romavia for Banat Air
Mark	YR-AMR
Departure airport	Verona Airport , Italy
Destination airport	Timisoara Airport , Romania
Passengers	41
crew	8th
Lists of aviation accidents

On the Banat Air flight 166 (Flight number: BZ166 ) took place on 13 December 1995 at Verona a serious air accident. An Antonov An-24 , which the Romanian Banat Air leased from Romavia to make a charter flight from Verona to Timișoara , had an accident shortly after taking off from Verona Airport . The cause of the accident was a stall and loss of control due to the lack of aircraft de- icing . All 49 people on board the machine were killed in the accident.

plane

The aircraft was an Antonov An-24B with the factory number 77303309 , which was handed over to the Romanian government in April 1968 and was initially used as a government aircraft, then later with the TAROM . In the early 1990s, the machine went into operation with the newly founded, second national airline from Romania, Romavia . From April to December 1993 the machine was leased to Kish Air . In 1995, the Romavia leased the aircraft to the Air Banat The twin-engine. Short routes - passenger aircraft was equipped with two turboprop -Triebwerken type Ivchenko AI-24A equipped with an output of 1,877 kW (2,552 hp).

Crew and passengers

The entire crew of the machine came from Romania and was provided by Romavia. The cockpit crew consisted of the flight captain Ivan Vasile Dan Mircea, the first officer Ivan Marin, the navigator Cornel Vlaghea and the technicians Georghe Popescu, Viorel Ilie and Anesia Gliga. In addition, the purser Corina Chelu and the flight attendant Alexandru Socol were on board.

41 passengers had taken the flight, most of whom came from different regions in northern Italy.

Weather

In the early afternoon of the day of the accident, it began to snow lightly in Verona. In the evening a heavy snowfall started.

Before departure

For the winter season 1995–1996, the private Romanian airline Banat Air had received approval from the Italian aviation authority to carry out non-stop charter flights on the Bucharest – Timişoara – Verona route. The flight was carried out on alternating days (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) on behalf of the Romanian travel agency Banat Air Travel in cooperation with the Italian agency Business Jet. The aircraft used was usually a ROMBAC 1-11 , the Romanian-made licensed version of the British BAC 1-11. The flight was carried out in wet lease , the state-owned Romavia provided the aircraft and crew.

The ROMBAC 1-11 could carry around a hundred passengers. Since fewer passengers than usual had bought tickets for the flight on December 13, 1995, the airline decided to carry it out with a smaller aircraft of the Antonov An-24 type. There were problems with the transmission of the aircraft type. At 12:14 p.m. Banat Air sent a fax to Verona in which it announced the change of aircraft, but stated that the flight would be carried out with a Tupolev . The employee did not notice the letter and therefore did not forward it. Another fax arrived at 3:11 pm. It was corrected that it was not a Tupolev but an Antonov that would arrive. At the headquarters in Verona, the letter was read through and the aircraft type was noted as a Tupolev. The error was initially not noticed. At 4 p.m. the air traffic controller in Verona was informed that the aircraft was an Antonov An-24 weighing 21 tons. However, he did not correct the note "Tupolev", but only noted the weight.

The plane was scheduled to take off from Timișoara at 4:00 p.m. local time and land in Verona at 4:30 p.m. local time after a 1½ hour flight. The flight took off significantly delayed, at 18:43 local time in Timișoara. At 6:50 p.m. local time, the plane landed in Verona and rolled to Gate B6, whereupon 44 passengers alighted and the luggage was unloaded. The ramp attendant, an employee of the airport assistance company SpA Valerio Catullo , contacted Captain Mircea, sent him the weather report, went through the passenger list and discussed the loading plan with Mircea. This was followed by boarding and luggage loading, both of which were completed at 7.30 p.m.

In view of the adverse weather conditions - there was heavy snowfall - the handler asked Captain Mircea whether he would like to de-icing the aircraft . The process would have taken 12 minutes and resulted in a bill of 250 thousand lira . Mircea firmly refused to de-icing. In 2015 liters of kerosene were refueled, with which the machine was full again. There were thus 4800 liters of kerosene in the tanks. Captain Mircea stated that he wanted to fill in the loading plan himself. Shortly afterwards, the ramp attendant delivered the completed loading plan to the airport headquarters office. On this occasion, nobody noticed that it contained obviously incorrect values. According to the information, the machine would have consumed 2000 kilograms of kerosene during the stop in Verona. Shortly afterwards, while checking the technical data of the Antonov in the archives, the same employee learned that two crews from the same airline had not submitted the plan for the departing cargo on previous flights. However, the problem was not investigated further.

The tower gave the master clearance to start the engines. Five minutes later, the airport operations manager requested the Antonov's loading plan, but the responsible employee did not have it. In the absence of this document, the office decided not to carry out any further checks and did not inform air traffic control of the incomplete documentation which could have led to the take-off being refused.

the accident

At 19:33, the air traffic controller gave YR-AMR clearance to taxi to runway 22 take-off position. After reaching this position, the crew were instructed to fly west immediately after take-off to avoid the village of Sommacampagna in accordance with noise pollution regulations, and then continue south.

Twenty minutes after taxiing began, when the weather conditions worsened (the snow became more flaky and visibility decreased from minute to minute), the Antonov began the take-off run from runway 22. Shortly afterwards, the accident occurred: the aircraft was in Initial climb and had reached an altitude of 200-300 meters above the ground at a flight speed of 480 km / h. Shortly afterwards, 49 seconds after take-off, the flow stalled, which the pilots were unable to intercept due to the low altitude at that time. The machine fell to the ground within 10-12 seconds and hit northwest of runway 04 at a distance of about 1500 m from the runway threshold. The 4800 liters of kerosene immediately caught fire. None of the 49 inmates managed to save themselves from the wreck.

Rescue operation

Extinguishing and rescue work at the crash site

The wreck of the machine

At 19:56, the air traffic controller in Villafranca looked for the machine on his radar in order to obtain confirmation of the take-off from the crew and to instruct them to switch to the Garda radio frequency . The pilot received no answer, not even after calling the machine three or four times. After consulting with the Garda approach control, which informed him that she was not in contact with the Antonov, the airport fire brigade was alerted. Without knowing the exact location of the crash, she immediately went to look for the accident site.

Within a minute of the crash, several emergency calls were received from the population: at 7:57 p.m., a woman dialed the emergency number 113 and explained angrily that an airplane had "fallen on the head". At 7:59 pm, a farmer called the emergency number 115 (whose operations center was already in contact with Villafranca airport) and reported the fall of an airplane "into his garden". The first two callers were unable to clearly state the location of the accident. A third caller, who dialed the emergency number 118 at 8:06 p.m., was finally able to provide precise information about the location of the crash.

At around 8:09 p.m., the fire engines reached the crash site in the Poiane di Sommacampagna area and began to extinguish the flames. The first ambulances arrived two minutes later. Within half an hour it turned out that there were no survivors in the wreck of the Antonov, so that at 8:40 p.m. most of the rescue workers withdrew.

Victim

All 49 people on board were killed in the accident. Of the 41 passengers killed, 30 were Italian citizens. With 6 passengers and 8 crew members, the second most casualties came from Romania, in addition four Serbs and one Dutchman were killed.

nationality	Passengers	crew	total
Italy	30th		30th
Romania	6th	8th	14th
Serbia	4th	-	4th
Netherlands	1	-	1
total	41	8th	49

Accident investigation

Debris at the crash site

Mechanical failure hypothesis

An aircraft accident investigation was initiated shortly after the accident. The investigators first investigated the hypothesis of mechanical failure. Above all, possible mechanical failures were suspected. One hypothesis was that the right engine had failed. Evidence of such an event emerged from the data of the flight data recorder and the remains of the cockpit instruments, the decoding of which was made difficult by the calibration to units of measurement other than in Europe and the formulations written in Cyrillic and made cooperation with translators necessary. Several passengers who had flown on the same aircraft on the outbound flight stated in questioning that they had heard "hammer-like blows" from the right engine while the landing gear was being extended.

During the investigation of the propeller fragments, damage was found that would have been associated with an engine damage. In such a case, the propeller will stop turning and create a lot of drag which will slow the aircraft down. It was almost immediately ruled out that this problem could have been caused by pieces of ice peeling off the wings: since the Antonov An-24's engines were under the wing, they would have been protected from such an event. In the case of the scenario described, the master of the machine could have brought the propeller blades into the sail position, so that they would have caused little drag due to a parallel alignment to the air flow. However, the time window for performing this maneuver might have been too short due to the low altitude. The severe damage and fire damage to which the engines and instruments were exposed, however, did not enable the investigators to determine with sufficient certainty whether the error described had actually occurred.

Human factor: negligence

During the investigations it was found that negligence and mistakes of the pilots and the ground crew were the main causes of the accident. In particular, it was criticized that the pilots had refused to de-icing the wings at the time of the accident, despite the heavy snowfall and the freezing temperature. It was assumed that this decision was made in particular because of the cost factor of 250,000 lire for de-icing. Such a rigid austerity policy, in which security measures were rejected due to cost considerations, was not uncommon among airlines in Eastern Europe. In addition, the two pilots were of the opinion that the design of the An-24, whose flight behavior could theoretically not be impaired by small ice deposits due to its generously dimensioned wing profiles, enabled a take-off without prior de-icing.

The pilots did not consider that the ice not only changed the aerodynamic properties, but also increased the weight of the machine, which led to a change in lift and would have significantly restricted the Antonov's controllability.

During the investigation of the Antonov's take-off weight, investigators became aware of further irregularities. It turned out that the plane was full and full of fuel. 70 kilograms of luggage were loaded per passenger, although 90 kilograms per passenger including luggage should have been calculated. The investigators calculated that the machine was overloaded by around 2000 kilograms, in contrast to the maximum take-off weight specified in the operating manuals. Because of the overload, the machine should not have received a start release.

As emerged from the investigations into the processes at the airport before the accident, the start of the overloaded and icy machine was only made possible by a chain of events that contained a series of negligence and misconduct by the ground staff in Verona. If the employees had acted in a disciplined manner, the Antonov could have been prevented from falling. The investigators particularly criticized the submission of an incorrect flight plan. According to the applicable regulations, the start should have been prevented for this reason. The staff in Verona had little to no knowledge of the aircraft type concerned. Its technical data (including operating instructions and weight limits) were not included in the ARCO program. The responsibilities for carrying out the relevant controls under these conditions were not clearly defined.

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• Accident report in the Aviation Safety Network
• Image of the machine and the wreck , B3A - Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives
• Operating history on rzjets.net

Coordinates: 45 ° 22 ′ 34.6 ″  N , 10 ° 51 ′ 24.8 ″  E