page_title: Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801 / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Piramida (Pyramiden9, an abandoned Sovjet-style settlement at Spirsbergen, Svalbard (Norway). The place was a coal mining community, abandoned in 1998.
context_page_description: Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801 was an international charter flight from Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia to Svalbard Airport in Longyearbyen, Svalbard Norway. On 29 August 1996, at 10:22:23 Central European Summer Time, a Tupolev Tu-154M operating this flight crashed in Operafjellet, Svalbard, during the approach to Svalbard Airport, Longyear. All 141 people aboard the plane were killed, making it the deadliest aviation accident ever in Norway. The accident was the result of a series of small navigational errors causing the aircraft to be 3.7 kilometres from the approach centerline at the time of impact.
  The Vnukovo Airlines aircraft, registration number RA-85621, had been chartered by Arktikugol, a Russian state-owned coal mining company, to fly Russian and Ukrainian workers to its Pyramiden town on Svalbard. The passengers all belonged to the Russian communities of Barentsburg and Pyramiden. The accident was a contributing cause for Arktikugol's closure of Pyramiden two years later. The accident was investigated by the Accident Investigation Board Norway with assistance from the Interstate Aviation Committee and became known as the Operafjell Accident.
context_section_description: On 20 September, the surviving relatives of each decedent received 2 million Russian rubles (about US$40,000) for each person who died in the accident. Ukrainian relatives stated to Norwegian media that they had not received information about the cause and other issues surrounding the accident. At the time, Ukraine was experiencing very high unemployment, and Arktikugol offered wages many times what was then offered in mainland Ukraine. Many miners not only had to support their immediate family, but also relatives. Vnukovo Airlines stated on Ukrainian television that the relatives would receive US$20,000 per deceased person. About a year after the accident, all relatives had been offered US$20,000, but about two-thirds of them chose not to accept the amount, and instead started a process to sue the insurance company. Their lawyer, Gunnar Nerdrum, stated that according to both Norwegian and Russian law, they could demand at least US$140,000.
  In February 1998, the Norwegian Ministry of Justice stated that the relatives did not have a right to occupational injury compensation from the Norwegian National Insurance. Because of the Svalbard Treaty, the archipelago is an economic free zone and Arktikugol is exempt from paying social insurance, so its employees did not have a right to Norwegian benefits. Had this been the case, widows would have received about NOK 600,000 per worker. By 1998, a few of the relatives had accepted the US$20,000 compensation, while the rest of them were planning to sue both the airline's insurance company and Arktikugol. Among the issues in the case, which took place at Nord-Troms District Court, was whether the accident was to be considered a working accident, and thus result in injury compensation from the mining company. In November, it was decided that the Ukrainians needed to make a guarantee for NOK 2.5 million to run the case, which they could not afford. They therefore had no alternative than to accept the proposal from the insurance company. In June 1999, the parties agreed on a settlement, where the compensation was not disclosed to the public. It was later disclosed that the settlement was about three times the initial offer from the insurance company. In 1999, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs established a scholarship to help children who lost a parent in the accident to take senior secondary and tertiary education.
caption: The accident was a contributing cause for Arktikugol's closure of Pyramiden two years later. Pyramiden was closed in 1998 and has since remained largely abandoned with most of its infrastructure and buildings still in place.
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