Nürnberger Flugdienst Flight 108 was a scheduled regional flight which crashed near
Essen
Essen () is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as ...
, Germany, on 8 February 1988 with the loss of all 21 occupants. The flight was operated by Swearingen SA-227AC Metroliner III D-CABB for Nürnberger Flugdienst, from
Hannover Airport
Hannover Airport is the international airport of Hanover, capital of the German state of Lower Saxony. The ninth largest airport in Germany, it is situated on in Langenhagen, north of the centre of Hanover. The airport has flights to Euro ...
to
Düsseldorf Airport
Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the seventh-largest city in Germany, with a 2022 population of 629,047.
The Düsse ...
. It is the deadliest aviation accident involving the Swearingen Fairchild Metroliner.
Accident
Flight 108 took off from
Hannover Airport
Hannover Airport is the international airport of Hanover, capital of the German state of Lower Saxony. The ninth largest airport in Germany, it is situated on in Langenhagen, north of the centre of Hanover. The airport has flights to Euro ...
at 7:15am and was on approach to runway 24 at Düsseldorf Airport by 7:50am, in a thunderstorm. The Captain of the flight was Ralf Borsdorf, 36, and the First Officer was Sibylle Heilmann, 29. At 7:56am both flight recorders abruptly stopped recording and the aircraft disappeared from
secondary radar
Secondary surveillance radar (SSR)''Secondary Surveillance Radar'', Stevens M.C. Artech House, is a radar system used in air traffic control (ATC), that unlike primary radar systems that measure the bearing and distance of targets using the de ...
. Two minutes later, pieces of the Metro III impacted near Kettwig adjacent to the Ruhr River, killing all 21 people aboard.
Investigation
The investigation revealed that the aircraft had been hit by
lightning
Lightning is a natural phenomenon consisting of electrostatic discharges occurring through the atmosphere between two electrically charged regions. One or both regions are within the atmosphere, with the second region sometimes occurring on ...
during the approach to Düsseldorf Airport, which disrupted the electrical system and therefore the flight instruments. The pilots became disorientated and blindly entered a high speed descent. Witnesses on the ground described the plane as coming out of the clouds briefly and entering a climb, which suggested that the crew briefly regained orientation of the aircraft upon seeing the ground. However, once it re-entered the clouds the crew likely became disoriented again. After almost 2 minutes of "predominantly uncontrolled flight," one of the trailing edge flaps (which could not be retracted without electrical power) failed due to overloading, sending the aircraft into an unrecoverable spiral during which it disintegrated in midair.