It was during the exercise Cold Response 2012 that a top-modern, two-year old Norwegian Hercules transport plane with five officers on board crashed into Sweden’s highest mountain Kebnekaise.
As a result of the strong crash and the following explosion, the wreckage was scattered over a large area and buried in an avalanche. The search operations were very difficult and dangerous, as the terrain is very hard and the weather conditions in the area are often bad.
The Swedish Accident Investigation Authority had planned to have the investigation report ready by the end of 2012, but the report has now become so comprehensive that it is still not ready to be published.
“We have constantly been receiving new information that has made us to postpone publication of the final report”, Agne Widholm in the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority says to NRK. The report is now 200 pages long and needs to be shortened, Widholm says.
In May last year the Accident Investigation Authority published a preliminary report on the accident, saying that the plane had received an approach height from the tower in Kiruna which was lower than the highest point on Kebnekaise. How this message was given and accepted by the pilot is not yet known. But the cockpit voice recorder and flight recorder have been found and the explanation will come in the final report.
Less than 40 percent of the plane wreckage has been brought down from the more than 2000 meters high mountain. The clean-up of the crash site will continue this summer.
Lieutenant Colonel Truls Audun Ørpen (46), Captain Bjørn Yngvar Haug (40), Captain Siw Robertsen (45), Captain Ståle Garberg (42), and Captain Steinar Utne (35) were killed in the accident.
