D-ECHO wrote in Fri Dec 02, 2016 4:29 pm:[...] in 1990 a DHC6 crashed [near Vaeroy island] due to those wind shears tearing the aircraft apart.
I thought you meant that figuratively till I read the link... Yikes! It was
literally torn to pieces within a minute after departure.
From the accident report:*
The cause of the accident was that the plane during departure came into the wind conditions that exceeded the aircraft's design criteria. Thus there was a break in the horizontal stabilizer/elevator which meant that the plane could no longer be controlled.
This accident is also a stark reminder that it is not always that easy to make the right decision and delay or cancel a flight even though you might risk it all, as you may be under (real or perceived) pressure from the company or your passengers (of which neither may understand and appreciate the risks involved).
The winds they got prior to taxi was beyond the
ground operating limits in the gusts, but they still took the decision to start taxing and as the winds got down a bit they took off (though the wind still was outside the company's operational limits). That being said, during the last years before the accident and the closing of the airport some 15% of the flights was cancelled and about 96% of them due to wind conditions. However, no
departures was cancelled... (p. 34-35) Perhaps needless to say, there had been prior incidents, and pilots did in no way like the airport in adverse wind conditions.
I noted that the accident commission made no recommendation to close the airport.
* In Norwegian, the original language of the official accident report (pdf, 2.5 MB): "Årsaken til havariet var at flyet under utflygingen kom inn i vindforhold som oversteg flyets konstruksjonskriteria. Derved oppsto det brudd i haleflate/høyderor som medførte at flyet ikke lenger kunne kontrolleres."
** See also http://aviation-safety.net/database/rec ... 19900412-0 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wider%C3%B8e_Flight_839