page_title: Widerøe Flight 933
section_title: Aircraft
hierarchical_section_title: Widerøe Flight 933 / Aircraft
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the flight path of Widerøe Flight 933. The thick line is the part observed by radar; "vrak" marks the location of the wreck. Norsk bokmål: Banen til WF933 (Mehamn-ulykken). Den tykke linjen er det som er fulgt på radar.
context_page_description: Widerøe Flight 933, also known as the Mehamn Accident, was the crash of a de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter operated by Norwegian airline Widerøe. The Twin Otter crashed into the Barents Sea off Gamvik, Norway on 11 March 1982 at 13:27, killing all fifteen people on board. The results of the four official investigations were that the accident was caused by structural failure of the vertical stabilizer during clear-air turbulence. A mechanical fault in the elevator control system caused the pilots to lose control of pitch; and either a series of stalls or a high-speed gust of wind caused the aircraft to lose altitude without the ability of the crew to counteract, resulting in the failure of the vertical stabilizer.
  The accident occurred during a NATO military exercise, within a self-declared no-fly zone for allied military aircraft. An extensive search and rescue operation was carried out and the submerged wreck was found on 13 March. The aircraft and all but one of the deceased were retrieved. An official investigation was concluded on 20 July 1984.
context_section_description: The accident aircraft was a 19-passenger de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter, registration LN-BNK. It was built by de Havilland Canada in 1977, delivered new to Widerøe and registered in Norway on 9 February 1978. The aircraft had been damaged by jet blast from a Douglas DC-9 at Tromsø Airport in March 1980, after which the rudder was replaced. Beyond this, the Twin Otter had not been subject to any other extraordinary incidents. It had met all requirements regarding maintenance and certification and had operated about 10,000 hours at the time of the accident.
caption: Map of Flight 933's route. The thick line is the route followed by radar; "vrak" is where the wreckage was found
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