Description

On 11 December 2006, a Boeing 747SP being operated by Syrian Air on a scheduled passenger flight from Damascus to Stockholm was arriving on the designated parking gate at destination in normal visibility at night when it collided with the airbridge. None of the 116 occupants of the aircraft suffered any injury but the aircraft was “substantially damaged” and the airbridge was “damaged”.

Investigation

An Investigation was carried out by the Swedish Accident Investigation Board. It was established that the Docking Guidance System had been wrongly programmed to display flight crew guidance for a standard length 747, which has two passenger doors forward of the wing, rather than the shorter SP version which has only a single door forward of the wing. The airbridge operator reported being unfamiliar with the aircraft variant code which was correctly indicated at the control panel. It was noted that although some gates at the airport were at the time of the accident already equipped with a modification which provided an automatic alert if the aircraft type entered was incorrect, the gate allocated to the accident aircraft was not one of these. It was also noted that the emergency stop button had been activated by ramp staff just before impact occurred but not in time to prevent the top of the left wing striking the underside of the airbridge which resulted in a large hole being torn in the upper surface of the wing.