2012 Norwegian C-130 crash

The crash of a C -130 Hercules at Kebnekaise occurred on 15 March 2012. A military transport aircraft Lockheed C -130J -30 Hercules collided with the west flank of Kebnekaise, the highest mountain in Sweden with 2,104 meters.

Course

The C -130 Hercules of the Luftforsvaret (Norwegian Air Force ) was on 15 March 2012 on the way from the Norwegian airport / Narvik, where she was launched at 13:40 clock, the Swedish Kiruna airport. The Department participated in the NATO exercise Cold Response, a multinational exercise among other soldiers from Denmark, Germany, France, Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States.

The evaluated after the accident, radar data showed that the flight route until shortly before the crash coincided with the planned route under IFR; the crew had but the option is kept open, to cover the distance in tactical low-level flight, should allow the weather. Shortly before reaching the area around the Kebnekaise, the Hercules got the release to descend to 7,000 feet ( 2,134 meters), a height which is only 20 meters above the summit of Kebnekaise. Shortly thereafter, the machine disappeared from the radar.

Studies in the following days showed that the aircraft was flown from the west in the ridge to the summit of Kebnekaise, thereby triggering an avalanche, the crew and the aircraft buried under what finding and recovery significantly more difficult. None of the persons on board survived the disaster.

Crew and aircraft

Crew

The crew consisted of four officers of the 335th Season ( Skvadron ), stationed at Oslo Airport Gardermoen: Two pilots, Lieutenant Colonel Truls Audun Ørpen and Captain Ståle Garberg and two load masters, Captain Siw Robertsen and Captain Bjørn Yngvar Haug. Also on board was located the flight safety officer Captain Steinar Utne, a helicopter pilot of the 137th Squadron from Rygge.

The crew was considered very experienced, Garberg, the aircraft commander was on the flight to Kiruna, had a total of 6,229 flight hours, including 758 on the C -130J, Ørpen 3285 hours, 243 on the J- model. The aircraft was flown by Lt. Col. Ørpen, this was pilot flying.

Aircraft

In the crashed plane, it was a Lockheed C -130J -30 Hercules with the identifier, the same serial number, 5630, baptized in the name Siv. She was one of four machines of this version in the inventory of the Norwegian armed forces, which had been delivered in 2008 by Lockheed and six older versions of the Hercules C- 130E and H had become detached. The locomotive was quickly handed over to the Norwegian Air Force in June 2010 and belonged to the 335th squadron. The aircraft had completed 856 hours of flight time in a crash, the last periodic repair, an A -Check was performed 71 hours of flight time before the crash in January 2012, the next control ( a so-called C-check ) for the July of the same year stated.

Causes

The final report of the Swedish authorities are as a cause of the crash, that the crew of an instruction from the air traffic controllers in Kiruna was followed, without being aware that they leave controlled airspace with this release and thus were below the minimum safe altitude.

" The accident what Caused by the crew on HAZE 01 not noticing to the short comings in the clearances issued by the air traffic controllers and to the Risks of Following synthesis clearances, Which resulted in the aircraft coming to leave controlled airspace and be flown at an altitude did what lower than the surrounding terrain. "

The Hercules was indeed equipped with a system that will generate a warning when approaching the ground ( Ground Proximity Warning System, GPWS ), for two reasons, however, this could not warn the crew before the collision: On the one hand was the "reference altitude", below which the alarm is transmitted, is set to 200 feet; on the other hand, the crew was on a tactical flight and had the GPWS switched to the mode " tactical ". In this mode, although a higher resolution of the maps is used, but was already known before the accident that the map data is north of the 60th parallel very inaccurate and the system is not properly available in tactics mode. For these reasons, the GPWS issued no warning of what could be reconstructed even when tailing of the track.