On 31 August 2019, an Airbus AS350 helicopter operated by a contracted Helitrans pilot from Sweden crashed in the mountains of Skoddevarre in Alta, Norway, during a sightseeing tour, killing all six people on board. The tour was offered by a local music festival, , who had been providing the service for seven years. The helicopter, registered as LN‑OFU, had recently been delivered and had undergone security checks hours before takeoff.
An investigation by the Norwegian Safety Investigation Authority (NSIA) found no technical faults with the machinery, and concluded that LN‑OFU had entered servo transparency; the stresses on the rotors had exceeded the hydraulic servomotor's capacity, causing the controls to lock up. This was caused by the helicopter's heavy load and rapid fluctuations in velocity and height. The pilot tried to regain control, but was ultimately unable to do so and crashed into the terrain. As the aircraft did not have a crash-resistant fuel system (CRFS), the wreck promptly caught fire, destroying most of it and inflicting lethal burns to the people on board; autopsies of the victims' bodies suggested that they died from their burns. The NSIA consequently called for the ban of commercial flights on rotorcraft without CRFSs in the European Union.
Helitrans received criticism for allowing an inexperienced pilot to fly with passengers, and for not having CRFSs installed on their helicopters. After the incident, they started replacing their fleet of aircraft with new ones installed with CRFSs. Both and Helitrans stopped providing sightseeing tours.
Background
, a music festival held in Kvenvik, Alta, Northern Norway, had been arranging helicopter tours for attendees every year since 2012 for apiece. The company operating the tours, Helitrans, rented helicopters from , who had acquired seven helicopters in June 2019 from , the Norwegian representative for European aerospace manufacturer Airbus. Both Helitrans and were owned in whole by , an investment firm run by father-daughter pair Oddvar and Anne Line Røysi. Of their fleet of 25 helicopters, 15 were of the type Airbus AS350. Around 100 people were employed by Helitrans in 2019, one of whom was the Swedish pilot Fredrik Lindmark, who operated the flights in Kvenvik.
Fredrik Lindmark was a contract worker from Nyköping, Sweden, who lived with his partner and her son in Honningsvåg. He had worked with Helitrans as a loadmaster for two years since his first seasonal contract with them on 9 May 2017. His final contact with Helitrans was to last from 1 April to 30 November 2019. After having undergone an operator proficiency check on 26 August, he was now able to operate helicopters for them. 27 years old at the time of his death, he held a Swedish commercial flight certificate and a first-class medical certificate. He had obtained an AS350 rating from Airbus' facility in Marignane, France, in May 2018, where he scored a 96% on the knowledge test, and passed with full marks on the flight assessment. Airbus' training did not include supervised passenger flights. He underwent several successful proficiency checks, the last one performed in April 2019 by the Norwegian government. He had not undergone any training with a flight simulator. He was still in the process of gaining experience, having a combined flight time of 256 hours, 17 of which were conducted in AS350 type helicopters, and 50 hours in passenger flights. His employers at Helitrans viewed sightseeing tours as a less demanding task, therefore being fit for building the experience he lacked. Lindmark's coworkers described him as a thorough, structured, calm, and cautious individual, who was unlikely to invite danger by seeking thrills.
The helicopter operated by Lindmark, registered as LN‑OFU, was an AS350 with a flight time of 73 hours. It was ordered in September 2018 by Skjolden Cruisekai, and was delivered with an airworthiness certificate on 12 June 2019. Airbus had been working on crash-resistant fuel systems (CRFS) since 2011, which would be ready by 2014. They did not, however, make these obligatory in production until October 2019, and customers could therefore choose to leave them out. EU legislation from 2003 made it so any helicopter designs certified in or before 1994 did not require CRFSs. LN‑OFU did not have a CRFS, making it more vulnerable to catching fire in case of a crash. The installment of such a system would have cost . When questioned, CEO Oddvar Røysi denied that they left it out deliberately, noting that it was only considered "additional equipment" by the manufacturers.