Avioimpex Flight 110 was a scheduled international passenger flight operated by Avioimpex that crashed on 20 November 1993 while flying from Geneva to

Skopje Skopje ( , ; ; , sq-definite, Shkupi) is the capital and largest city of North Macedonia. It lies in the northern part of the country, in the Skopje Basin, Skopje Valley along the Vardar River, and is the political, economic, and cultura ...

. Before the disaster, Flight 110 had deviated from

Skopje International Airport Skopje International Airport (, ) , also known as Skopje Airport (, ) and Petrovec Airport is the larger and busier of the two international airports in North Macedonia, with the other being the St. Paul the Apostle Airport in Ohrid, which is l ...

to Ohrid Airport due to a blizzard in the Macedonian capital. The plane, a

Yakovlev Yak-42 The Yakovlev Yak-42 (; NATO reporting name: "Clobber") is a 100/120-seat three-engined mid-range passenger jet developed in the mid 1970s to replace the technically obsolete Tupolev Tu-134. It was the first airliner produced in the Soviet Union ...

, was carrying 108 passengers and eight crew, and crashed about east of Ohrid Airport. All 116 people on board were killed as a result of the crash. One passenger lived for eleven days after the disaster but succumbed to his injuries. Most of the victims were Yugoslav citizens of Albanian ethnicity. The crash was Macedonia's third aviation disaster in 16 months, and remains the country's deadliest. A subsequent investigation established the cause of the accident as pilot error.

Flight

Flight 110 was an international scheduled passenger flight originating in Geneva, Switzerland with a final destination of

Macedonia Macedonia (, , , ), most commonly refers to: * North Macedonia, a country in southeastern Europe, known until 2019 as the Republic of Macedonia * Macedonia (ancient kingdom), a kingdom in Greek antiquity * Macedonia (Greece), a former administr ...

. Due to a blizzard at Skopje, Flight 110 was diverted to Ohrid Airport. Cleared for an approach to Runway 02, the Yak-42 was approximately too high to carry out a successful landing, so a missed approach procedure was executed. Shortly afterwards the crew of Flight 110 radioed that they were not receiving the VOR signal. Air Traffic control was unable to satisfy the request for a bearing and the pilot of Flight 110 advised that he could not see the runway lights. Shortly thereafter Flight 110 crashed killing 115 of the 116 people on board. One passenger, a 23-year-old Serbian man, survived but was badly injured.

Passengers and crew

Eighty percent of the passengers were citizens of Yugoslavia, mostly ethnic Albanians, while the remainder were citizens of Macedonia. The four members of the flight crew were Russian and the four cabin crew members were Macedonian. Among the passengers was a French

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, l ...

(UNHCR) official in his mid-20s who had just returned from an assignment in war-torn

Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes known as Bosnia-Herzegovina and informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeast Europe. Situated on the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula, it borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to th ...

Aftermath

Due to Flight 110 being the third aviation disaster in a sixteen-month period to take place in his country, Minister of Urban Planning, Civil Engineering, Communications and Ecology resigned. The pilots association complained of broken equipment and poor safety standards at both Skopje and Ohrid Airports. On 1 December 1993, the initial survivor died without ever regaining consciousness in the days following the crash of Avioimpex Flight 110. Flight 110 remains the deadliest aviation disaster to ever take place in Macedonia.

Cause

The cause of the crash was attributed to a violation of the airport traffic pattern by the crew of Flight 110, who initiated a turn into rising terrain. A contributing factor was their decision to proceed with the approach even though they were not receiving a navigational signal due to being out of range of the VOR station. In addition, the air traffic controller's transmissions were spoken in Macedonian, but the crew of the aircraft communicated in Russian and English.

References

External links