Widerøe Flight 710

Widerøe Flight 710, commonly known as the Torghatten Accident , was a controlled flight into terrain into the mountain of Torghatten in Brønnøy, Norway. The Widerøe-operated de Havilland Canada Dash 7 crashed on 6 May 1988 at 20:29:30 during approach to Brønnøysund Airport, Brønnøy. All thirty-six people on board LN-WFN were killed; the crash remains the deadliest accident of the Dash 7 and in Northern Norway. The direct cause of the accident was that the aircraft had descended from 500 meters to 170 meters at 8 nautical miles instead of 4 nautical miles from the airport.

An investigation found several shortcomings in the airline's operating procedures, in particular lack of proper cockpit communication and mutual control of the descent and approach plans. This was in part caused by the airline electing to not follow the Sterile Cockpit Rule and that a passenger was sitting in a cockpit jump seat during the flight. The investigating commission also found lack of proper pilot training in the airline. Flight 710 was the second of four Widerøe accidents between 1982 and 1993, all of which revealed shortcomings in the airline's operations and internal control.

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