A West Atlantic Bombardier CRJ200 converted freighter crashed in Sweden near the Norwegian border after disappearing from radar during a mail transport flight between Oslo and Tromso.
The Swedish Accident Investigation Authority has released the following information:
A Mayday call was received shortly after midnight on 8 January 2016 from a cargo aircraft on route from Oslo to Tromsö in Norway with two crew onboard. The aircraft disappeared from radar screens approximately at the same time. The accident site has been localized west of the lake Akkajaure, about 200 km northwest of Gällivare.
The Swedish Accident Investigation Authority (SHK) has launched an investigation into the accident. It is still too early to draw any conclusions about the course of events. SHK will initially examine the wreckage with a focus on finding and recovering the aircraft recorders (black boxes). Furthermore, radar data and radio communications, etc. will be analyzed.
At the crash site SHK cooperates with the police, the rescue services and the Swedish armed forces. On Saturday, 9 January the rescue services were able to pump up about 1.5 cubic meters of liquid from the crater formed at the crash site. The liquid contains mainly jet fuel.
The aircraft was equipped with two black boxes. One is a Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and records audio in the cockpit. The other is a Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and records technical data of the flight.
On saturday, one of the black boxes (FDR) was found. It is heavily demolished and SHK technical investigators are working to determine whether the memory device is intact. The device will then be transported to a laboratory where the information can be read out. It may take some weeks before this has been done.
Parts of the second black box (CVR) were also found on saturday. The unit was, however, not intact, and the part that contains memory functions were missing. On sunday, the missing parts of the CVR were found.
Since the aircraft’s two black boxes have been found SHK believes that it will be possible to determine why the aircraft crashed. To extract the information and analyze it could take a few weeks. The investigation will then continue and SHK plans to publish a full report on the accident within twelve months of the event.