A Spanish plane goes off the runway at Montpellier airport and stops at the edge of the water

A Boeing 737 registered in Spain had an accident last night at Montpellier airport, when it arrived from Paris in a cargo operation.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
25 September 2022 Sunday 17:38
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A Spanish plane goes off the runway at Montpellier airport and stops at the edge of the water

A Boeing 737 registered in Spain had an accident last night at Montpellier airport, when it arrived from Paris in a cargo operation. After landing, the aircraft was partially submerged in the Etagn de l'Or, a lagoon separated from the Mediterranean by a belt of dunes, as it was unable to brake before the end of the runway. The only three occupants of the plane were able to get out of the Boeing unscathed and be rescued by firefighters at an airport, which has been closed to commercial aircraft traffic.

The plane, a B737-436F, took off from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport at 1:30 p.m. from Friday to Saturday on a cargo flight for Sweden-based West Atlantic Airways. However, the device was Spanish, one of the 46 aircraft of the Spanish company Swiftair, an operator born in 1986 due to the interest of the courier company SEUR in expanding its parcel services.

Painted in the corporate colors of West Atlantic, the Swiftair aircraft flew without incident between the French capital and the Hérault department, in the Occitanie region. The wheels touched down on runway 12L at the Montpellier-Méditerranée 63 minutes after taking off from runway 08L at the Charles de Gaulle in Paris.

The main runway at Montpellier airport, 2,600 meters long, was not long enough to stop a Boeing that reached the opposite threshold at a speed of more than 100 kilometers per hour. The unpaved terrain between the runway and the water finally stopped the aircraft, whose front part was partially submerged in an area where the waters are shallow and have historically been used for salt mining and fishing. The fact that the plane was a cargo plane and not a passenger plane lightened the possible seriousness of a mishap, since the only occupants of the plane were three air transport professionals.

The BEA, French Civil Aviation Safety Investigation and Analysis Office, in addition to one of the most prestigious agencies in the world in its field, has already sent a team to Montpellier to find out the causes of this runway excursion that has forced the airport to be closed to commercial aircraft air traffic. This facility had scheduled a quarantine of operations today.

Helicopters and light aviation are exempt from this restriction as Montpellier has a second runway parallel to the main one, just over 1,000 meters long, used by the local flying club, flight schools and those visitors who arrive in general aviation aircraft. . In a statement, the local prefecture indicated that for the moment the closure to commercial aviation is maintained indefinitely, for safety, for passenger and cargo flights, as is the case of the affected one. The authorities hope to draw up a plan in which, with the appropriate machinery, the Boeing can be removed from the water and clear the vicinity of runway 30R.

The aircraft, registered EC-NLS, is one of British Airways' former Boeing 737s and was used by British Airways for its domestic and European flights from 1993 to 2015. When British decommissioned it, the 737 was reconfigured as a freighter. , removing all its seats, modifying its fuselage and reinforcing certain surfaces. Before operating for the Madrid-based Swiftair, it had a British registration, with which it operated for the West Atlantic division in the United Kingdom. Yesterday's was the first flight of the day for this Boeing, which the night before had been precisely in Montpellier. In the last month, the Spanish plane has made between four and seven flights per day, always between French airports, except for a few trips to the capital of Tunisia from Marseille.

Now the BEA will have to investigate the causes of the accident on the ground and prepare a report that will be useful to find out the reason and implement preventive or operational measures, if necessary.