 The wreckage at Operafjellet | |
| Accident | |
|---|---|
| Date | 29 August 1996 CEST |
| Summary | Controlled flight into terrain due to navigational error |
| Site | Operafjellet, Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway 78°12′51″N 16°05′43″E / 78.21417°N 16.09528°E[1]: 3 |
| Aircraft | |
 RA-85621, the aircraft involved in the accident, in May 1996 | |
| Aircraft type | Tupolev Tu-154M |
| Operator | Vnukovo Airlines |
| Registration | RA-85621 |
| Flight origin | Vnukovo International Airport, Moscow, Russia |
| Destination | Svalbard Airport, Longyear, Longyearbyen, Norway |
| Passengers | 130 |
| Crew | 11 |
| Fatalities | 141 |
| Survivors | 0 |
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.[2] The accident was the result of a series of small navigational errors causing the aircraft to be 3.7 kilometres (2.3 mi; 2.0 nmi) 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 (Norwegian: Operafjell-ulykken). After the accident, a series of lawsuits determined compensation for the victims' families.