The 2000 Skerjafjörður plane crash happened on 7 August 2000 when a Cessna T210L Centurion II aircraft, TF-GTI, operated by Leiguflug Ísleifs Ottesen with six people on board crashed into the sea in Skerjafjörður, just outside

Reykjavík Reykjavík is the Capital city, capital and largest city in Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland on the southern shore of Faxaflói, the Faxaflói Bay. With a latitude of 64°08′ N, the city is List of northernmost items, the worl ...

, Iceland.

Background

The plane was on a scheduled flight from

Vestmannaeyjar Airport Vestmannaeyjar Airport ( ) is a two-runway airport on the island of Heimaey, in Vestmannaeyjar (Westman Islands), a small archipelago off the south coast of Iceland. It is also known as Westman Islands Airport. The airport services seasonal, ...

Reykjavík Airport Reykjavík Airport ( Icelandic: ''Reykjavíkurflugvöllur'') is the main domestic airport serving Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland. The airport is located about from the city centre. It is the domestic hub of Icelandair flights and has two r ...

with passengers who had been attending the annual

Þjóðhátíð Þjóðhátíð (, "National Festival") is an annual outdoor festival held in Vestmannaeyjar island, Iceland, on the weekend before the first Monday in August. Locals and guests gather in Herjólfsdalur valley on the island of Heimaey for four d ...

, the largest national festival in Iceland. It was the 22th flight of the day for the pilot.

Accident details

Flight

The plane was about to touch the runway in Reykjavík when the pilot received an order from the control tower to abort as another plane was on the runway. The pilot then raised the flight and intended to make another circle. The aircraft had reached an altitude of about 500 feet when the engine lost power and stalled. Shortly after, the plane hit the sea in Skerjaförður, about 350 meters from land, broke apart and sank at a depth of about six meters with everyone on board. The plane rested on its left side, with the right wing sticking out of the sea. A nearby

barge A barge is typically a flat-bottomed boat, flat-bottomed vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. Original use was on inland waterways, while modern use is on both inland and ocean, marine water environments. The firs ...

, owned by a diving company, arrived at the scene few minutes after the crash and within 30 minutes of the accident, divers recovered five of the six occupants from the wreckage and brought to shore.

Fatalities

One of the passengers died at the scene of the accident, as rescuers were unable to recover him from the passenger site of the cockpit until the plane was lifted from the sea. The pilot and one of the passengers were pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital and another passenger died a few days later. The last two passengers died within a year from their injuries.

Cause

In its report, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Board concluded that the cause of the accident was that the plane ran out of fuel, with contributing factors being the pilots fatigue.

Aftermath

The crash led to several rule changes regarding aviation safety in Iceland, including reducing the number of landings in Vestmannaeyjar per 30 minutes to eight to limit the number of aircraft in the airspace at any given time. Following the rule changes, there were no fatal air accidents in the country for nine years, a notable reduction from the almost yearly fatal accidents from the decade before.

References

External links

Official accident report
{{Aviation accidents and incidents in Iceland 2000 in Iceland Icelandic Aviation accidents and incidents in Iceland Aviation accidents and incidents caused by fuel exhaustion Aviation accidents and incidents caused by pilot error August 2000 in Europe History of Reykjavík