Austrian Airlines Flight 901

Austrian Airlines Flight 901
Accident summary
The Vickers Viscount involved in the accident
Date	26 September 1960
Summary	Crashed short of runway
Site	11 km (6.9 mls) W of Sheremetyevo International Airport, Soviet Union
Passengers	31
Crew	6
Fatalities	31
Survivors	6
Aircraft type	Vickers 837 Viscount
Operator	Austrian Airlines
Registration	OE-LAF
Flight origin	Vienna International Airport, Vienna, Austria
Stopover	Warsaw Chopin Airport, Warsaw, Poland
Destination	Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow

Austrian Airlines Flight 901 was a flight from Vienna, Austria to Moscow, USSR (now Russia) via Warsaw, Poland. On the night of 26 September 1960 the aircraft operating the flight, a Vickers Viscount, crashed near Moscow while on its approach to land, killing 31 of the 37 passengers and crew on board.

Aircraft

The aircraft was a Vickers Viscount 837 four-engined turboprop airliner registered OE-LAF.^[1] The aircraft had first flown on 10 February 1960 and had been delivered new to Austrian Airlines about two weeks later, seven months before the crash.^[1]

Accident

The aircraft departed Warsaw with six crew and 31 passengers on board. The flight was on approach to land on runway 07 at Sheremetyevo International Airport in the northern outskirts of Moscow when it crashed in a rural area 11 kilometres (7 mi) short of Sheremetyevo's runway near the town of Trukovo.^[2]

Investigation

The investigation determined that the crew thought that the aircraft was higher than it actually was and that it flew into trees during its approach and crashed. Investigators found that the captain's altimeter (the left-hand altimeter) was adjusted to show a different altitude to the copilot's altimeter. The left altimeter's barometric sub-scale had been set to a pressure that would have resulted in it reading zero feet on the ground at Sheremetyevo. However the sub-scale on the copilot's altimeter was set to a pressure that would have resulted in it reading the airport's height above mean sea level when on the ground at Sheremetyevo. This was against the airline's operating procedures, but the investigation could not determine the reason for the discrepancy.^[3]

Sources

Notes

1 2 Eastwood 1990, p. 397
↑ Airliner, 37 aboard, down
↑ Vickers Viscount 837 OE-LAF accident synopsis retrieved 29 January 2013

Bibliography

Eastwood, Tony (1990). Turbo Prop Airliner Production List. The Aviation Hobby Shop. p. 321. ISBN 978-0-907178-32-3.

External links

Austrian Airlines Flight 901 at Airdisaster.com

← 1959
Aviation accidents and incidents in 1960 (1960)
1961 →

Jan 6 National Airlines Flight 2511
Jan 18 Capital Airlines Flight 20
Jan 19 SAS Flight 871
Jan 21 Avianca Flight 671
Feb 25 Rio de Janeiro crash
Mar 17 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710
May 1 U-2 incident
Jun 10 Trans Australia Airlines Flight 538
Jul 15 Ethiopian Air Lines Flight 372
Jul 16 1960 Danish football air crash
Sep 26 Austrian Airlines Flight 901
Oct 4 Eastern Air Lines Flight 375
Oct 29 Cal Poly football team
Dec 16 New York mid-air collision
Dec 17 Munich Convair 340 crash

Coordinates: 56°00′09″N 37°05′46″E / 56.0026°N 37.0960°E / 56.0026; 37.0960

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