Crash site	Lake Akkajaure, Sweden
Airline	West Atlantic Sweden AB
Aircraft	Bombardier CRJ-200  –  SE-DUX
Route	Oslo/Gardermoen  –  Tromsø/Langnes
Crew	2  –  0 survivors
Passengers	0

 

The crash

The daily cargo plane from Oslo to Northern Norway left Gardermoen airport at 23:10. At 00:18 while flying over Swedish airspace the crew sent out a brief mayday message.  Two minutes later the airplane crashed in a mountainous area located northwest of the lake Akkajaure – 10 km from the Norwegian border.
The crash site was spotted at 03:09 by a Norwegian F-16 plane and the Swedish rescue team arrived on the site the following morning.
It appears the airplane hit the ground in a near vertical attitude at high speed. A crater was formed at impact and much debris were scattered around the area.
The cause of the crash is yet to be established.

 

The mail

On board the plane was around 4.5 tons of mail consisting of priority letters (A-breve) and express parcels destined for the areas with postcode numbers between 90xx and 99xx – except the 94xx numbers.
On 12 January the Norwegain Post announced that the rescue workers had collected 15 bags with mail from the plane. Most of the mail was probably lost. Due to heavy snow in the area the work at the crash site will first be resumed when the snow has melted.
After the 15 bags of mail were released by the crash investigators the mail was transported to the postal facility “Østlandsterminalen” outside of Oslo for further inspection.
On 27 January the Norwegian Post announced that all the mail was in such condition that it was not suitable for forwarding, and that it would be destroyed. Quite a surprice as it is known that more letters had full addresses etc. and could very well have been forwarded.
By the way – not all the mail was destroyed. For some reason one cover with an enclosed passport was returned to the police.