Qualla: Widerøe Flight 839

Widerøe Flight 839: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Procolotor, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sixty-three seconds. That is how long Widerøe Flight 839 was in the air before it hit the water off Værøy, a small island at the southern edge of the Lofoten archipelago in northern Norway. On April 12, 1990, a de Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter took off into winds that had been clocked at 57 knots -- seven knots above the aircraft's ground-operation limit. The tail rudder and tailplane cracked under the strain, and the plane became uncontrollable. Eight seconds later, all five people on board were dead. No aircraft has taken off from Værøy Airport since.

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Image: Procolotor | CC BY-SA 3.0

Widerøe Flight 839: An Airport the Wind Owned

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jostein Torstensen, CC BY-SA 3.0. Værøy sits exposed in the Norwegian Sea, its 800-odd residents dependent on boats and planes for connection to the mainland. The airport, perched on the island's terrain, had always been a difficult proposition. Uneven and powerful winds gave it notoriously low regularity, forcin...

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Image: Jostein Torstensen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Widerøe Flight 839: The Fallout

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jostein Torstensen, CC BY-SA 3.0. The crash did more than end five lives. It ended an airport. Widerøe announced within weeks that it would not resume service to Værøy and would decline its operating concession unless the island received a new facility. The chairman of the airline's pilots' union, Captain Helge H...

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Image: Jostein Torstensen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Widerøe Flight 839: A Question of Metal

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jostein Torstensen, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Norwegian Accident Investigation Board published its conclusions in 1991, attributing the crash to the extreme wind conditions. The case seemed closed. Then, in May 1994, English aviation engineer Hugh Tyrer told the Narvik newspaper Fremover that he believed the real cause w...

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Image: Jostein Torstensen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Widerøe Flight 839: Vindication and Legacy

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jostein Torstensen, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Accident Investigation Board commissioned the National Aerospace Laboratory in the Netherlands to test the disputed components independently. Their report, published on March 23, 1995, upheld the original conclusion: the wind, not the fatigue, was the primary cause. The Wider...

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Image: Jostein Torstensen | CC BY-SA 3.0