Paris - Sofia

On January 18, 1971 at 03:49 PM, Paris - Sofia experienced a crash involving Ilyushin II-18, operated by Balkan Bulgarian Airlines, with the event recorded near Zurich-Kloten Zurich.

The flight was categorized as scheduled revenue flight and the reported phase was landing (descent or approach) at a airport (less than 10 km from airport) crash site.

47 people were known to be on board, 45 fatalities were recorded, 2 survivors were identified or estimated. This corresponds to an estimated fatality rate of 95.7%.

Crew on board: 8, crew fatalities: 7, passengers on board: 39, passenger fatalities: 38, other fatalities: 0.

The listed crash cause is human factor. In the afternoon, the airplane departed Paris on flight LZ130 to Sofia, carrying 39 passengers and a crew of eight. While cruising at its assigned altitude vertical to Luxeuil VOR, the captain requested to ATC the permission to divert to Zurich-Kloten Airport. The reason for this rerouting was unknown. The crew was cleared to change his route and continued over south of West Germany before starting a descent to Zurich. The approach to runway 16 at Zurich-Kloten was initiated in poor weather conditions with fog reducing the horizontal visibility to 600 meters and the vertical visibility to 60 meters. On final, the left main gear and the left wing tip struck the ground. The airplane gain a little height then struck the ground, lost its four engines and crashed in flames about 700 meters short of runway threshold, slightly out from the approach path. The aircraft was totally destroyed by impact forces and a post crash fire and only two occupants survived the accident, the captain and a boy aged 12. All 45 other occupants were killed. The occupants were respectively 14 West German, 12 Bulgarian (among them 8 crew members), 9 French, 4 Syrians, 2 Lebanese, one Brazilian, one Dutch, one Argentinian, one Austrian, one Finnish and one British.

Aircraft reference details include registration LZ-BED, MSN 186 0090 02, year of manufacture 1966.

Geospatial coordinates for this crash are approximately 47.4439°, 8.5715°.