Air accident IFO-21
| Air accident IFO-21 | |
|---|---|
 A US Air Force Sikorsky MH-53 helicopter hovers behind the wreckage of the Boeing |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Type of accident | CFIT |
| place | near Dubrovnik |
| date | April 3, 1996 |
| Fatalities | 35 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing CT-43A |
| operator | United States Air Force |
| Mark | 73-1149 |
| Departure airport |
.svg){kind=small} Tuzla airport
|
| Destination airport |
 Dubrovnik airport
|
| Passengers | 30th |
| crew | 5 |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
Under the call sign IFO-21 was on April 3, 1996, a passenger aircraft in the US Air Force during the landing approach to the airport Dubrovnik , Croatia , flew into a mountain. On board the Boeing CT-43A, a military version of the Boeing 737-200 , were the five-man aircraft crew and the 30 members of a business delegation headed by the then US Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown . Only one stewardess with the rank of technical sergeant survived the immediate impact, and she too died during the transport to the hospital.
Background and cause
The aircraft was part of the 76th Airlift Squadron of the 86th Airlift Wing based in Ramstein , Germany. Unlike civilian Boeing 737s, the military version CT-43A was neither equipped with a flight data recorder (FDR) nor a voice recorder (CVR) .
The official final report of the aircraft accident investigation named several reasons that led to the accident. The main reasons cited were “a failure at the command level, errors by the cockpit crew and an unsuitable approach to landing according to instrument flight rules ”. The investigation team did not consider the adverse weather conditions at the time of the accident to be a major factor.
The Boeing CT-43A was originally a Boeing T-43-A training aircraft that had been converted for the transport of important people. She was on the approach to landing according to instrument flight rules at Dubrovnik Airport, whose navigational aids at that time consisted only of two non-directional radio beacons (NDB) . In the course of this, it deviated from the course on runway 12. During NDB landing approaches, the pilots only receive a horizontal guidance.
The investigation team found that the United States Department of Defense's aircraft approach procedures required at the time due to weather conditions were not approved and should not have been flown by the crew. The NDB landing approach described for Dubrovnik at that time required that an aircraft had to be equipped with two radio compasses (ADF) ; the unlucky machine only had one ADF. The investigation team also found that the speed during the final approach was 150 km / h too high and the pilots had not yet received a landing permit from the control tower.
The site of the accident is on a 700 m high hill 2.6 km northeast of the imaginary line on which the aircraft should have been on the way to the NDB. Five other aircraft had landed in Dubrovnik before IFO-21 and none had any problems with the navigation aids. The pilots of the unfortunate aircraft did not make an emergency call and did not initiate a go - around, although they were already beyond the point relevant for a go-around when the machine crashed on the hill at 14:57 local time.
Web links
- Department of Defense: News Briefing , minutes of the press conference on June 7, 2006 on the occasion of the publication of the results of the aircraft accident investigation