Scandinavian Airlines Flight 933
Encyclopedia
The Scandinavian Airlines System
Flight SK933, a McDonnell Douglas
DC-8 Series 62
, registered
LN-MOO, named Sverre Viking, of Norwegian
registry, crashed in Santa Monica Bay
, approximately 6 nautical miles (11.1 km) west of the Los Angeles International Airport
, Los Angeles
, California
, at approximately 19:21 P.S.T., January 13, 1969. The aircraft was operating as Flight SK933 from Seattle, Washington, to Los Angeles, California, following a flight from Copenhagen
, Denmark
. A scheduled crew change occurred at Seattle for the flight to Los Angeles
.
to Runway
07R at Los Angeles International Airport. The SAS cockpit crew became so occupied with attempting to diagnose the lack of a nose gear green light that they allowed their rate of descent to increase until the DC-8-62 crashed into the ocean, well short of the runway. Of the 45 persons aboard the aircraft, 3 passengers and 1 cabin attendant drowned; 9 passengers and 2 cabin attendants were never found and presumed dead; 11 passengers and 6 crew members, including the captain, the co-pilot, and the flight engineer
, were injured in varying degrees; and 13 passengers escaped without reported injury. The aircraft was destroyed by impact.
The fuselage
broke into three pieces, two of which sank in approximately 350 feet (106.7 m) of water. The third section, including the wings, the forward cabin and the cockpit
, floated for about 20 hours before being towed into shallow water where it sank. This section was later recovered and removed from the water.
Scandinavian Airlines System
Scandinavian Airlines or SAS, previously Scandinavian Airlines System, is the flag carrier of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and the largest airline in Scandinavia....
Flight SK933, a McDonnell Douglas
McDonnell Douglas
McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor, producing a number of famous commercial and military aircraft. It formed from a merger of McDonnell Aircraft and Douglas Aircraft in 1967. McDonnell Douglas was based at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport...
DC-8 Series 62
Douglas DC-8
The Douglas DC-8 is a four-engined narrow-body passenger commercial jet airliner, manufactured from 1958 to 1972 by the Douglas Aircraft Company...
, registered
Aircraft registration
An aircraft registration is a unique alphanumeric string that identifies a civil aircraft, in similar fashion to a licence plate on an automobile...
LN-MOO, named Sverre Viking, of Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
registry, crashed in Santa Monica Bay
Santa Monica Bay
Santa Monica Bay is a bight of the Pacific Ocean in southern California, United States. Its boundaries are slightly ambiguous, but it is generally considered to be the part of the Pacific within an imaginary line drawn between Point Dume, in Malibu, and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Its eastern...
, approximately 6 nautical miles (11.1 km) west of the Los Angeles International Airport
Los Angeles International Airport
Los Angeles International Airport is the primary airport serving the Greater Los Angeles Area, the second-most populated metropolitan area in the United States. It is most often referred to by its IATA airport code LAX, with the letters pronounced individually...
, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, at approximately 19:21 P.S.T., January 13, 1969. The aircraft was operating as Flight SK933 from Seattle, Washington, to Los Angeles, California, following a flight from Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
. A scheduled crew change occurred at Seattle for the flight to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
.
Accident
The accident occurred in the waters of Santa Monica Bay while the crew was attempting an instrument approachInstrument approach
For aircraft operating under instrument flight rules , an instrument approach or instrument approach procedure is a series of predetermined maneuvers for the orderly transfer of an aircraft under instrument flight conditions from the beginning of the initial approach to a landing, or to a point...
to Runway
Runway
According to ICAO a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and take-off of aircraft." Runways may be a man-made surface or a natural surface .- Orientation and dimensions :Runways are named by a number between 01 and 36, which is generally one tenth...
07R at Los Angeles International Airport. The SAS cockpit crew became so occupied with attempting to diagnose the lack of a nose gear green light that they allowed their rate of descent to increase until the DC-8-62 crashed into the ocean, well short of the runway. Of the 45 persons aboard the aircraft, 3 passengers and 1 cabin attendant drowned; 9 passengers and 2 cabin attendants were never found and presumed dead; 11 passengers and 6 crew members, including the captain, the co-pilot, and the flight engineer
Flight engineer
Flight engineers work in three types of aircraft: fixed-wing , rotary wing , and space flight .As airplanes became even larger requiring more engines and complex systems to operate, the workload on the two pilots became excessive during certain critical parts of the flight regime, notably takeoffs...
, were injured in varying degrees; and 13 passengers escaped without reported injury. The aircraft was destroyed by impact.
The fuselage
Fuselage
The fuselage is an aircraft's main body section that holds crew and passengers or cargo. In single-engine aircraft it will usually contain an engine, although in some amphibious aircraft the single engine is mounted on a pylon attached to the fuselage which in turn is used as a floating hull...
broke into three pieces, two of which sank in approximately 350 feet (106.7 m) of water. The third section, including the wings, the forward cabin and the cockpit
Cockpit
A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft, from which a pilot controls the aircraft. Most modern cockpits are enclosed, except on some small aircraft, and cockpits on large airliners are also physically separated from the cabin...
, floated for about 20 hours before being towed into shallow water where it sank. This section was later recovered and removed from the water.
Probable cause
- "...the probable cause of this accident was the lack of crew coordination and the inadequate monitoring of the aircraft position in space during a critical phase of an instrument landing approach which resulted in an unplanned descent into the water. Contributing to this unplanned descent was an apparent unsafe landing gear condition induced by the design of the landing gear indicator lights, and the omission of the minimum crossing altitude at an approach fix depicted on the approach chart."
External links
- NTBS, National Transportation Safety Board Brief summary of this accident
- NTSB complete report on this accident.
- Harrison, Scott. "SAS jetliner crashes off L.A. coast, 1969." Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
. May 10, 2011.