A Widerøe plane from Bodø with 29 passengers on board flew 700 feet lower than the pilots thought during the approach to Svolvær. – Serious, says Widerøe.
Only when the alarm from the plane’s terrain warning system went off did the pilots become aware of the error, writes NRK.
– The altimeter was not set as required by the procedure before approach, says Widerøe.
The incident occurred on December 22.
– We consider the incident to be serious, says communications manager Catharina Solli in Widerøe.
The company has evaluated the incident and put new procedures in place to prevent something similar from happening again.
– The incident was immediately reported to the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority, and we informed the Accident Investigation Board, she says.
The Accident Investigation Board has started its investigations and classifies it as a serious aviation incident.
– What we consider a serious aviation incident is if the last barrier before an accident is the person sitting behind the levers. Then it takes very little before it can develop into an accident, says department director Kåre Halvorsen at the National Accident Investigation Board.
Neither the company nor the Accident Investigation Board wants to say anything about how low the plane was when the warning system told the pilots to take action to avoid an accident.
According to Flightradar24 the plane was at its lowest point of 425 feet altitude during the approach, which equates to about 130 meters above sea level, before rapidly climbing. There is some uncertainty related to the figures, NRK points out.
– I don’t want to say anything about how low they were, but there was no immediate danger of the plane ending up in the sea, says Halvorsen.
