Iberia flight 261

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Iberia flight 261
EC-ASE DC-3 Iberia AGP 23AUG64 (5550496309) .jpg

An Iberia Douglas DC-3
Accident summary
Accident type Ditching
place Atlantic Ocean , off the coast of El Sauzal , Tenerife , Canary Islands , SpainSpain 1945Spain 
date September 16, 1966
Fatalities 1
Survivors 26th
Aircraft
Aircraft type United States 48United States Douglas DC-3 / C-47A-75-DL
operator Spain 1945Spain Spantax for IberiaSpain 1945Spain
Mark Spain 1945Spain EC-ACX
Departure airport Los Rodeos Airport , Tenerife , Canary Islands , SpainSpain 1945Spain 
Destination airport La Palma Airport , Santa Cruz de La Palma , Canary Islands , SpainSpain 1945Spain 
Passengers 24
crew 3
Lists of aviation accidents

On September 16, 1966 a Douglas DC-3 / C-47A-75-DL operated by Spantax for Iberia had to fly on Iberia flight 261 (flight number: IB261 , radio call sign: IBERIA 261 ), a domestic scheduled flight from Tenerife to La Palma , after an engine problem in the Atlantic Ocean . One passenger was killed in the subsequent evacuation.

machine

The aircraft was a Douglas DC-3 C-47A-75-DL series, which in the work of Douglas Aircraft Company in Long Beach , California built and on 7 January 1944, the factory serial number 19410 and the military air vehicle registration number 42-100947 to the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was extradited. The machine was in service with the Twelfth Air Force in North Africa during World War II . After the war, the C-47 was categorized as a USAAF surplus and demolished. The machine was sold to Spain and converted into a civilian DC-3. The aircraft then went into operation at Iberia in December 1947 with the aircraft registration EC-DAY . In June 1951 the machine then went to the Spantax, which it approved as the EC-ACX . The DC-3 was powered by two Pratt & Whitney R-1830-92 Twin Wasp double radial engines , each with an output of 1,200 hp. At the time of the accident, the machine had a cumulative total operating performance of 25,134 operating hours.

Passengers and crew

The domestic scheduled flight from Los Rodeos airport on Tenerife to La Palma airport had taken 24 passengers. There was a three-person crew on board, consisting of a flight captain, a first officer and a flight attendant.

The captain had 5,000 hours of flight experience, of which he had completed 3,500 hours in the cockpit of the Douglas DC-3. The first officer had completed a total of 1,400 flight hours, including 350 in the cockpit of the Douglas DC-3.

the accident

Just two minutes after taking off from Los Rodeos Airport, the left engine over-revved. When the usual procedures that had to be used when the propeller was over-turned were unsuccessful, the captain tried to bring the propeller into the sail position , which also failed. The machine lost height and the captain had to ditch the sea. After ditching, the machine was quickly evacuated. A passenger obstructed it during the evacuation. The machine sank five minutes after ditching. Except for the passenger who had obstructed the evacuation, all occupants were able to leave the aircraft. The passenger refused to leave the plane and was eventually killed when it went down.

root cause

The accident investigation came to the conclusion that the accident had occurred due to an overspeeding propeller on engine no. Since the wreck was never recovered, the cause of the propeller malfunction could not be clarified.

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