AVIATION/ SWEDEN REPORTS ON SAS FL1

The Swedish Accident Investigation Board, SAIB, has released its final report into a serious incident involving a SAS Boeing 737 at Lulea, Sweden, on February 27, 2007. On that date, SAS Flight 1 was on Domestic Service from Lulea to Stockholm, Sweden, with 88 passengers and 5 crew members onboard. On the day of the incident, the Airport was operating under low visibility. Flight 1 was cleared to taxi to runway 14. Although the tower could not see the aircraft, when the crew reported they were holding short of the runway, the tower cleared Flight 1 for takeoff. As the crew spooled the engines for takeoff, the tower heard the engines coming from the South, instead of the expected North. Tower staff noted no conflicts and did not order the crew to abort takeoff. The 737 then took off, but the tower noted them appearing on radar to the North of the airfield, rather than the expected South of the airfield. Flight 1 had not taken off from the ordered runway 14, but rather the opposite runway, runway 32. The SAIB stated that the probable cause of the incident was: "Deviations from the Crew Resource Management concept, mainly concerning internal and external communications". The SAIB noted that they were not informed of the incident until the next day, and the Cockpit Voice Recorder has already been overwritten, thus their investigation was hampered. The report blames the visibility, the tower staff, but most of all, the cockpit crew. The SAIB noted that the Captain was pre-occupied with taxi on low visibility, while the Co-Pilot was receiving other communications. The full report, including the sequence of events that went on in the cockpit, can be found on the SAIB website.