By Doug Mellgren
The Associated Press
OSLO, Norway — A charter plane caught fire and skidded off the runway while landing at a western Norwegian airport, killing three people on board, police and rescuers said.
Rescue officials said 12 other people aboard were rescued without serious injury and one was missing.
Jan Olav Olsen, of the district police, said three people reported missing were found dead in the wreckage.
Police and rescue officials initially said they counted 13 survivors, however at a news conference later Tuesday police said they were trying to account for one of those.
The British Aerospace BAe 146-200 jet with a capacity of 83 passengers and six crew was operated by Atlantic Airways of the Faeroe Islands. It had taken off from the southwestern Norway Sola Airport, near Stavanger, and skidded and caught fire upon landing at the Stord Airport, further north, said Anders Bang-Andersen, of the Norwegian Rescue Center.
The cause of the accident had not been determined. The national crash investigation board was sending a six-member team to the accident site.
In a statement, Atlantic Airways said its aircraft apparently was damaged and caught fire after it overshot the runway with 13 passengers and three crew aboard. The airline said two passengers and one member of the crew were killed.
Police said the names of the victims were being withheld pending notificiation of their families.
At a news conference, District Police Chief Odd Magne Haaversen said one of the 13 people first registered as a survivor was missing. Norway’s largest newspaper, Verdens Gang, said police suspect that the person left the airport on his own, but that they were also searching the area in case he was somewhere around the airport in shock, or in the wreckage.
Swedish airline pilot Sven-Erik Stranberg, who heads Atlantic’s Norwegian base at the Sola Airport, landed an identical plane at Stord just before the accident, and watched the plane land.
“The landing and weather conditions were fine. Everything seemed fine,” he said on the Norway’s NRK radio."Then another colleague came in and said there might be something wrong, because there was smoke from the end of the runway.”
Fritz Arne Lilleskog, also of the district police, said the fire was brought under control after about an hour, but that the heat from the wreckage had slowed efforts to search the plane.
“We don’t know what happened. It was during descent and landing, but that is all we know,” he said. Lilleskog said the aircraft was severely damaged, but that he had no reports of serious injuries to those rescued.
Photographs posted on the Internet sites of Norwegian newspapers showed a ball of fire and clouds of smoke coming from end of the runway.
The plane was chartered by shipbuilding and construction firm Aker Stord, a subsidiary of engineering group Aker Kvaerner, the company said. It was heading to Molde, further up the Norwegian coast, but was making a stopover on Stord, an island about 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Stavanger, Aker Kvaerner said.