Rimini – Catania

On April 30, 2016 at 11:35 AM, Rimini – Catania experienced a crash involving Fokker 50, operated by Air Vallée, with the event recorded near Catania Sicily.

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.

21 people were known to be on board, 0 fatalities were recorded, 21 survivors were identified or estimated. This corresponds to an estimated fatality rate of 0.0%.

Crew on board: 3, crew fatalities: 0, passengers on board: 18, passenger fatalities: 0, other fatalities: 0.

The listed crash cause is technical failure. On April 30, 2016, the aircraft Fokker F27 MK50 registration marks SE-LEZ, operating Air Vallee flight number RVL233, took off from Rimini airport at 06.48 hrs with 18 passengers and 3 crew on board. During the final approach to Catania airport, with the aircraft stabilized on ILS Z RWY 08, the crew noticed that the right and left main landing gear lights were green but the nose landing gear light was amber. The crew informed the ATS (Catania APP) that they were in contact with the problem and informed them of their intention to continue the approach to perform a low pass on the runway followed by a standard missed approach procedure, in order to request a visual verification from the control tower of the actual extension of the nose gear. During the low passage, the control tower informed the crew that the nose gear was not extended despite the opening of the nose gear compartment. After the passage, all lights, including the amber light of the nose landing gear, went off. The aircraft proceeded to the INDAX point to perform a holding at an altitude of 3000 feet as agreed with ATS during which the crew applied the abnormal procedures for nose gear unsafe down after selection and alternate down procedures. Both procedures were unsuccessful and the crew declared an "emergency" informing ATS of their intention to perform a final maneuver (leveled 2G turn). The captain of the flight, who had been PNF up to that moment, took the controls as PF and executed the turn: also in this case without any positive outcome. The crew informed ATS of the situation, stating the number of passengers, the amount of fuel on board and the absence of dangerous goods. The crew decided to follow a VOR procedure for RWY26 followed by a visual approach in order to make a last low passage to check the condition of the nose gear. After this second missed approach, the aircraft was instructed to perform an ILS procedure for RWY 08. Landing took place at 09:34 hrs with the main gear properly extracted and locked, the nose gear in "up" position and the doors open. The following is a sequence of pictures taken from a video of the accident, acquired by ANSV through the Catania airport operator, in which the aircraft is seen landing with the nose landing gear not extended and touching the ground only when it reached the speed necessary to sustain it in the absence of nose landing gear support. After completion of the landing run, with the aircraft remaining in the middle of the runway, the engines were shut down and passengers and crew disembarked without further incident. Some of the passengers were transferred to the airport emergency room and subsequently some of them were sent to hospital for further examination; no passenger was reported to have sustained injuries as a result of the event.

Aircraft reference details include registration SE-LEZ, MSN 20128, year of manufacture 1988.

Geospatial coordinates for this crash are approximately 37.5083°, 15.0862°.