Rheintalflug flight 102
Coordinates: 47 ° 29 ′ 28 " N , 9 ° 31 ′ 34" E ; CH1903: 757,302 / 262,141
| Rheintalflug flight 102 | |
|---|---|
 Image of the Altenrhein airfield with Lake Constance in front of it |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Crash on approach |
| place | Lake Constance |
| date | February 23, 1989 |
| Fatalities | 11 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Aero Commander 690D "Jetprop900" |
| operator | Rhine valley flight |
| Mark | OE-FCS |
| Departure airport | Airport Wien-Schwechat |
| Destination airport |
Hohenems-Dornbirn airfield (actual destination) Altenrhein airfield (alternate airport) |
| Passengers | 9 |
| crew | 2 |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
On February 23, 1989, on the Rheintalflug flight 102, a scheduled aircraft of the Austrian Rheintalflug airline with nine passengers and two pilots crashed while approaching Altenrhein Airport in Lake Constance . All eleven people on board died in the aircraft accident, including the then Austrian Minister of Social Affairs Alfred Dallinger and the pilot Brigitte Seewald, who was a co-owner of the airline.
Flight history
The Aero Commander 690D “Jetprop900” aircraft, fully occupied with nine passengers, was scheduled to take off from Vienna-Schwechat airport to Vorarlberg at 9 am , where it was scheduled to land at Hohenems-Dornbirn airport approximately 1½ hours later . At this time, however, there was thick fog over Lake Constance and the Vorarlberg Rhine Valley , so that a landing was not possible either at Hohenems Airport or at the designated alternate airports in Altenrhein and Friedrichshafen . Pilot Brigitte Seewald and co-pilot Johann Rainer therefore decided to switch to the Leutkirch airfield in Germany, a few kilometers away . The flight took off from Vienna at 9:36 a.m. with a 36-minute delay. At around 10:35 a.m., co-pilot Rainer contacted air traffic control, from which he was informed that a landing at Altenrhein Airport in Switzerland, which is closer to Hohenems, would now be possible and that Hohenems could still not be approached due to thick fog. At 10:50 a.m., the flight crew made contact with the control tower in Altenrhein, from which they had been assigned runway 10. At this point in time, the aircraft was already approaching for landing over the Pfänder .
Pilot Seewald decided to fly over the airfield first to see the ground conditions. At 10:55 a.m. the tower in Altenrhein instructed the aircraft to accelerate the approach as a fog field was heading for the airfield. The confirmation of this instruction by the copilot is the last documented radio contact with the machine. After the aircraft was back over Lake Constance after a sharp turn and was thus approaching the runway of the airfield, it pierced the fog field over the lake while descending, whereby the pilots apparently misjudged the distance to the water surface due to a lack of visibility should. The machine fell about 1.5 kilometers from the shore in Lake Constance. The depth of the lake at this point is 76 meters.
Rescue and search for the cause
About two hours after the accident, the first parts of the wreckage were found on Lake Constance, at the same time the German research submarine Geo of the Munich Max Planck Society was asked for help, which happened to be on Lake Constance after it was recovering a helicopter that had crashed had helped. “Geo” discovered the plane wreck in the late afternoon at a depth of 76 meters in the mud. Due to the difficult weather conditions, it still took a week until the wreck could be recovered on March 2, 1989, so that it was certain that all eleven people on board had died.
The Swiss Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau came to the conclusion in its report of July 1991 that it was not a technical defect, but human error during the heavy fog that had led to the accident. On the other hand, Rolf Seewald, Rheintalflug owner and husband of the deceased pilot, suspected a badly worn or broken rope of the flap drive as the cause of the accident. In its investigation into the accident wreck, ETH Zurich was unable to determine with certainty whether this rope was defective before the accident or whether it was only torn by the impact on the water .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Michael Gasser: The drama about flight “Rheintal 102”. In: Vorarlberger Nachrichten . February 15, 2014, accessed December 18, 2019 .
- ↑ a b plane wanted to Leutkirch . In: Thuner Tagblatt . tape 111 , no. 49 , February 28, 1989, pp. 20 ( e-newspaperarchives.ch [accessed December 19, 2019]).
- ↑ a b c d e The crash remains a mystery. In: Vorarlberg Online (VOL.at). February 23, 2009, accessed December 18, 2019 .
- ↑ Machine crashed on approach to landing in Lake Constance - Dallinger among 11 victims . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 24, 1989, p. 2 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
- ↑ a b 20 years ago: Fatal crash over Lake Constance. In: The press . February 20, 2009, accessed December 18, 2019 .
- ↑ Bert Steingötter: Salvaging the wreck was precision work . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna March 4th 1989, p. 5 ( Arbeiter-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
- ↑ 30 years ago, the Commander AC 90 crashed on the Rhine Valley flight into Lake Constance. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . February 23, 2019, accessed December 18, 2019 .