Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751

Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 was a regularly scheduled Scandinavian Airlines flight from Stockholm, Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark and Warsaw, Poland that crashed on 27 December 1991. The McDonnell Douglas MD-81 was piloted by Danish captain Stefan G. Rasmussen and Swedish first officer Ulf Cedermark. Ice had collected on the wings prior to take off, which broke off and was sucked into the engines when the aircraft became airborne. After losing both engines, the pilots were forced to make an emergency landing in a field near Gottröra, Sweden.

The incident is known as Gottrörakraschen ( Gottröra crash) in Sweden.

Accident

The aircraft had arrived from Zürich on the previous evening and was parked overnight at temperatures of around 0 to 1 °C. About 2550 kg of flight-chilled very cold fuel remained in the wing tanks. Because of this, clear ice had formed on the upper side of the wings, but was not detected. The aircraft was de-iced with 850 liters of de-icing fluid, but not checked afterwards for remaining ice by either the de-icing personnel or the captain.

At lift-off and rapidly after it, pieces of ice slammed onto the fans of both engines, deforming the fan blades sufficiently to disturb the airflow to the compressors. The disturbed airflow caused the compressors to stall and this in turn caused engine surge. Because the engines were not throttled down sufficiently, the surges continued. The...
Read More