Sterling Airways Flight 296

Sterling Airways Flight 296
	A Sud Aviation Caravelle from Sterling Airways
Accident summary
Accident type	Controlled flight into terrain
place	Near Kalba , United Arab Emirates
date	March 14, 1972
Fatalities	112
Survivors	0
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Sud Aviation Caravelle 10B3
operator	Sterling Airways
Mark	OY-STL
Departure airport	Colombo Airport , Sri Lanka
1. Stopover	Bombay Airport , India
2. Stopover	Dubai Airport , United Arab Emirates
3. Stopover	Ankara Airport , Turkey
Destination airport	Copenhagen Airport , Denmark
Passengers	106
crew	6th
	Lists of aviation accidents

Sterling Airways Flight 296 (Flight number: NB296 ) was a charter flight of the Danish airline Sterling Airways from Colombo Airport to Copenhagen Airport with stops in Bombay , Dubai and Ankara . On the flight on March 14, 1972, a Sud Aviation Caravelle 10B3 had an accident because the crew was wrong about their flight position. All 112 people on board were killed.

It is the worst incident involving a Sud Aviation Caravelle and, together with an accident on Gulf Air Flight 771 , the worst aircraft accident in the United Arab Emirates .

machine

The aircraft involved in the accident was a Sud Aviation Caravelle 10B3 with the model serial number 267, which had completed its maiden flight on May 10, 1970 before it was delivered to Sterling Airways on May 19, 1970, where it had the aircraft registration OY-STL was approved. The twin- engine medium - range narrow-body aircraft was equipped with two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-9 engines. At the time of the accident, the aircraft had been operating for 6674 hours.

Passengers and crew

The plane was chartered by the travel company Tjaereborg Rejser to pick up 106 Europeans from vacation in Ceylon, today's Sri Lanka. The flight from Colombo to Copenhagen should have refueling stops in Bombay, Dubai and Ankara. During the stop in Ankara a new crew was supposed to get on.

The 106 passengers came from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and West Germany. The Danish cockpit crew consisted of the 35-year-old captain Ole Jorgensen and the 30-year-old first officer Jorgen Pedersen.

nationality	Passengers	crew	total
Denmark Denmark	68	6th	74
Sweden Sweden	20th	-	20th
Norway Norway	12	-	12
Finland Finland	4th	-	4th
Germany Germany	2	-	2
total	106	6th	112

Swell:

the accident

The Caravelle left Colombo punctually at 5:20 p.m. local time and landed in Bombay at 7:45 p.m. During this stop, passengers were not allowed to leave the aircraft. After refueling, the plane flew off in Bombay, the next stop was scheduled for 21:20 local time in Dubai.

Shortly before 10:00 p.m. local time, the crew began the approach to Dubai. The weather in Dubai at this time was cloudy with a few thunderstorms. Due to construction work on a runway, Dubai's instrument landing system was shut down. Air traffic control instructed the crew to conduct a VOR approach on runway 30.

At 10:04 p.m. the pilots reported that the VOR was not working properly. Shortly afterwards, the left wing grazed a mountain ridge about 490 meters above sea level. The left wing broke off and the machine flew another 265 meters before it hit just below the summit of the next mountain ridge. The debris slid down the slope and spread out over five different valleys. There were no survivors among the 112 people on board.

Accident investigation

During the investigation into the accident it was found that the pilots had allowed the aircraft to drop below the prescribed minimum flight altitude. This was either due to incorrect information from the flight plan, which is no longer up to date, or the incorrect reading of the data from the weather radar, which led the pilots to believe that they are closer to Dubai than was actually the case. In the dark, the pilots had probably seen the lights of the cities of Kalba , Fujairah and Ghuraifa and mistaken them for Dubai.

Sources and Links

Individual evidence

25.074167 56.355278Coordinates: 25 ° 4 ′ 27 ″ N , 56 ° 21 ′ 19 ″ E

[1] 112 persons feared killed in the crash of Danish plane .

[2] Plane crash death count may reach 112 .