Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801 was an international charter flight from Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, to Svalbard Airport on Spitsbergen, in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. On 29 August 1996 at 10:22:23 CEST, a Tupolev Tu-154M operating this flight crashed into the ground in Operafjellet during the final approach to Svalbard Airport. All 141 people (11 crew members and 130 passengers, of whom three were children) aboard the plane were killed, making it the deadliest aviation accident in Norway. The accident was the result of a series of small navigational errors causing the aircraft to be from the approach centerline at the time of impact.
The Vnukovo Airlines aircraft, with the registration number RA-85621, had been chartered by Arktikugol, a Russian state-owned coal-mining company, to fly Russian and Ukrainian workers to the towns of Barentsburg and Pyramiden in Svalbard. The accident was a contributing cause for Arktikugol's closure of Pyramiden two years later. The accident was investigated by the Accident Investigation Board Norway with assistance from the Interstate Aviation Committee and became known as the Operafjell accident (). After the accident, a series of lawsuits determined compensation for the victims' families.
History
Flight
Flight 2801 was a chartered flight flown by Vnukovo Airlines on behalf of Arktikugol, which operated mines at the two company towns of Barentsburg and Pyramiden in Svalbard. The aircraft was a Tupolev Tu-154M, with registration RA-85621, and serial number 86A 742. Its manufacture date was 14 January 1987. The crew consisted of captain Evgeny Nikolaevich Nikolaev (aged 44), co-pilot Boris Fedorovich Sudarev (aged 58), navigator Igor Petrovich Akimov (aged 50), flight engineer Anatoly Matveevich Karapetrov (aged 38), five cabin crew members, and two technicians. The captain had previously landed at Svalbard Airport; the co-pilot had not.
On board were 130 passengers, consisting of Arktikugol employees and their families, three of whom were children. Waiting at the airport for the return flight were another 120 employees and their families. The aircraft left Vnukovo Airport at 04:44 UTC (08:44 MSD). Estimated flight time was three and a half hours, and alternative airports were Murmansk Airport and Severomorsk-3, both in Murmansk Oblast. The flight proceeded normally until descent, following the routing W 29 from Moscow to Padun (west of Murmansk), before crossing to Bodø Flight Information Region over the Barents Sea cruising at FL 350, approximately at an average airspeed of . It then proceeded over non-directional beacons over Bjørnøya, Isfjorden, and Adventdalen.
Svalbard Airport, Longyear, is the main airport serving the Svalbard archipelago. It is located on the south shore of Isfjorden, with high terrain to the south, southeast, and east. It has a single, 10/28 runway, running roughly east–west. The airport has an elevation of above mean sea level, and has an aerodrome flight information service (AFIS), which is subordinate to Bodø Air Traffic Control Center (Bodø ATCC). The airport is regarded as uncontrolled and does not provide approach service.
On that day, all aircraft had used runway 28 due to favorable wind conditions, climb-up conditions, and short distance from the terminal. The weather at the accident area was dominated by a low pressure trough, causing rain showers and wind from at 240–270°. Visibility exceeded . Between 08:00 and 09:00, a weak trough passed, reducing visibility to and a cloud base at .
Accident
At 07:55 UTC (09:55 local Central European Summer Time, CEST), the crew requested clearance to start their descent. Because of lack of communication with Bodø ATCC, this was not obtained. At 07:56, information from Longyear AFIS was given that it had no conflicting traffic, allowing a descent to . The crew tried to request use of Runway 10, but this was, due to language problems, not understood as such by AFIS. Instead, Longyear communicated the actual weather and informed that Runway 28 was in use. An additional request for use of Runway 10 was again not understood, because of the misunderstanding of the term "runway in use". Because of this, the crew decided to instead use Runway 28.