Swiss Saab 2000 makes emergency landing in Germany; no injuries

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GENEVA (AFX) - A Saab 2000 aircraft owned by Swiss made an emergency landing on a disused German airfield, crashing into an embankment after running short of fuel in a violent thunderstorm, but none of the 20 people on board were injured, the airline said.

The aircraft was en route from Basel to Hamburg with 16 passengers and four crew when weather conditions foiled several landing attempts in Hamburg, Hanover and Berlin-Tegel, Swiss said.

Running low on fuel, the plane was forced to touch down at Werneuchen, a disused military airfield 60 km northeast of Berlin, it said.

jlv/slo/pav/

This was reported in the European press. I heard a rumor that on the pprune board they were saying the aircraft may be a write-off. The plane may have suffered severe damage. Can't verify that at this time. Sounds like they were very fortunate that nobody was injured/killed. Anyone know?

Here is some more information on the accident. The Aviation Safety Network has, I believe, a more accurate description of the accident but Airdisaster.com has the photos:

Aircraft Accident Description 10-JUL-2002 Saab 2000

Swiss LX 850

Thanks Christopher for the info. So the crew was warned about the obstacle but hit it anyway? They're lucky that nobody was harmed or worse.

Barbara

To get a clearer picture of Swiss airlines'record over recent years one has to look at swissair, crossair and 'swiss'. That's a lot of aviation tragedies/incidents IMHO for a small country. This doesn't even include the 1993 Munich incident (swissair), which was 1 minute from being another sr111 tragedy:

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi_bin/search_keyword.cgi?search=crossair

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi_bin/search_keyword.cgi?search=swissair