Norwegian Hercules down in Sweden.

[Alessandro]

Link in Swedish, 5 onboard, http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/herk...verige-saknas/

[ErwinS]

orwegian military plane goes missing during exercise CR

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- A Norwegian military transport plane with five people on board went missing Thursday during an exercise and was feared to have crashed in northern Sweden, officials said.

The C-130 was heading from Evenes in northern Norway to the Swedish city of Kiruna where it was supposed to pick up personnel, the Norwegian Armed Forces said.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane when it was 80-90 kilometers west of Kiruna, Norwegian military spokesman John Espen Lien said.

"We have to assume that we are looking for a plane that has crashed," Lien told The Associated Press.

He said at least four of the five people on board were Norwegians. A search and rescue operation was initiated by rescue services and military units in Sweden and Norway.

The plane went missing during a winter exercise called Cold Response, with 16,000 soldiers from 14 countries taking part. The purpose of the Norwegian-led exercise "is to rehearse high intensity operations in winter conditions within NATO with a U.N. mandate," the country's military said.

© 2012 The Associated Press.
Mar 15, 1:20 PM EDT

[ErwinS]

Emergency signals from the plane are said to have been detected coming from the area around Kebnekaise, Sweden's highest peak, Lars Broström of emergency services in Kiruna told the TT news agency.

Two Norwegian rescue helicopters were forced to turn around due to adverse weather conditions, with strong winds in the area where the aircraft is believed to have disappeared.

“Two Danish helicopters are trying to fly above the weather and the Swedish ones are trying to come in form the other side,” said Wrandel.

Swedish emergency response leader Jonas Sundin told the TT news agency that weather conditions had complicated search efforts.

"Unfortunately, there is some bad weather near Mount Kebnekaise, so the Norwegian emergency helicopters had to turn back," he said.

The plane was around 80 kilometres west of Kiruna when contact with the aircraft was lost.

"It's a large and sparsely populated area which is now being searched by several helicopters," Fredrik Persson of the Swedish air rescue services told TT

[Alessandro]

Wreckage parts found on both sides of Sweden´s tallest mountain Kebnekaise,
http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/a...artid=10079252
Norwegian link.

[Passion for flying]

The position of the crash is in the general line of the route, however there is reason to wonder why the aircraft was flying so low.
Looking at the survey photos posted by the Norwegian Air Force, it would appear that the impact occured from the west side of the Kebnekaise ridge, between the north and south peaks, (some?) hundred meters below the ridge. The highest peak being the south peak, 2106 meters AMSL.

http://www.expressen.se/tv/nyheter/i...pa-kebnekaise/

http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/har-kraschade-planet/

One would assume that a route plan for a ferry flight between Evenes and Kiruna would have accounted for a considerable altitude safety margin.

So, the questions stack up:

If there was a technical problem with the aircraft, why was there no distress call? The flight just disappeared off radar.

Some references to SSR information pertaining to the flight has appeared in the press, and it reveals that the aircraft has been flying lower than mimimum clearance altitude a few moments before the crash, passing over the peak of Kuopertjåkka, only a few kilometers away from the impact site.

Autopilot altitude hold inadvertently switched off, and noone watching instruments?

A more subtle technical error that crept up on the crew?

It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has deeper insight into this.

[ErwinS]

Seems a classic CFIT. Very sad.