Paninternational Flight 112
Aircraft
The aircraft involved was a BAC One-Eleven registered as D-ALAR and first flew one year before the accident.
Accident
Paninternational Flight 112 took off from Hamburg Airport in Hamburg, West Germany, on a flight to Málaga Airport in Málaga, Spain, with 115 passengers and six crew on board. The captain was Reinhold Hüls, a former military pilot with more than 3,000 hours flying time; co-pilot Elisabeth Friske was the first woman jet pilot in West Germany, at the time with only 7 hours in the BAC One-Eleven. After the takeoff, as the aircraft climbed through 300 metres (980 ft), both engines failed and the captain decided to make an emergency landing on a highway – Bundesautobahn 7 (also part of European route E45) – about 4.5 km (2.8 mi; 2.4 nmi) from Hamburg Airport. During the landing, on the south-bound carriageway to avoid heavy traffic out of Hamburg, the aircraft deflected to the left and collided with an overpass and multiple concrete pillars, causing the right wing, cockpit, and T-tail to shear off. The rest of the fuselage broke up and skidded to a halt resting against an oak tree, and subsequently caught fire. The accident killed twenty-one passengers and one crew member.
Cause of the crash
Subsequent investigation showed that one or two of the five tanks for the water-injection engine thrust-augmentation system (used during take-off) had inadvertently been filled with kerosene instead of with demineralised water. Spraying this additional jet fuel into the engines caused them to overheat and fail shortly after take-off. Two maintenance workers for Paninternational were sentenced to prison terms in 1974.
See also
- Southern Airways Flight 242 a Douglas DC-9, which also crashed on April 4, 1977 during an emergency landing on a highway
- Dominicana DC-9 air disaster a 1971 DC-9 crashed caused by engines contaminated with water
References
- ^ Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident BAC One-Eleven 515FB D-ALAR Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel Airport (HAM)". Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
- ^ Spaeth, Andreas (5 September 2021). "Absturz auf der Autobahn". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German).
- ^ "Autobahnatlas.de information for A7". www.autobahnatlas-online.de (in German). Retrieved 29 May 2010.
- ^ "Absturz auf der A7: Ein Wartungsfehler mit tragischen Folgen" (in German). Norddeutscher Rundfunk. 6 September 2021.
Further reading
- Müller-Tischer, Jan (2013). Notlandung auf der A7: Die Flugzeugkatastrophe von Hasloh (documentary film, 27 mins, 43 secs) (in German).
- Aircraft Accident Report – Über die Untersuchung des Unfalles BAC 1-11 D-ALAR der Paninternational am 6.9.1971 bei Hasloh – Bundesrepublik Deutschland (in German)