Very sad read. I hope they will find the reason for it. Also a sad day for AOPA.
An A to A AOC has a distance limit, am thinking 25nm from the departure, so possibly this was not a commercial operation? Unless they were running an A to B in a C172?
Who said it was a commercial flight?
In all likelihood, the flight was conducted under the guise of the EASA cost sharing rules, so was NCO.
@RobertL, I’m just going on the limited info in the linked article which – at least to me – quite clearly says ‘commercial ops’. No idea about the Icelandic A to A rules. In FAA-land you would be correct, but the operator needs a LOA from the FAA if conducted under Part 91. But we seriously digress here.
Many years ago I rented a 172 in Reykjavik and took my wife and daughter to Vestmannaeyjar for the day, also touring in the accident area. It was no problem. I elected to take their instructor with us (as he want to go there for a few hours anyway) rather than a separate hour long checkout rental. 4 up, 2+ hours flying, no problem. They wanted to know where I would take their plane, but showed no sign of limiting where I went. With the transponder arrangement in Iceland, they would have known anyway!
From DAR’s link:
“The pilot, Haraldur Diego, 49, was considered one of Iceland’s most prominent aviators and a pioneer of photography tours.”
Haraldur was somewhat of a celebrity in the small Icelandic aviation community. Among other things, he befriended some of the Diamond ferry pilots who often stop at Reykjavik, and last summer he met FlightChops while he was recording his trip across the pond as a guest on a Diamond plane (first episode just came out). According to his Instagram, the next episode will be dedicated to Haraldur. Unclear if he will say more about the accident but I doubt he has inside information.
They crashed in the middle of a lake of all things. The aircraft with all the people sank to the bottom. Very odd.
Very odd indeed. The lake is only about 7×4 nm, with possibility for an emergency landing on the west coast at least, he must have been very low to not be able to glide out of it. Any information about weather at the time of the accident?
Nothing about the weather at the time. From Iceland Review Online:
“As of Saturday night, South Iceland police had advised that poor weather conditions and difficult conditions on Þingvallavatn lake would made it unlikely that they would be able to extract the plane before next week. Assessments had yet to determine if it would be possible to recover the bodies of the victims from the crash site before that. The Cessna 172N was found in the southeastern part of the lake, at a considerable distance from the shoreline and a depth of 48 metres [157 ft]. This is a difficult depth for divers to work at, not to mention that the water temperature ranges between 0-1°C [32-33.8°F].
“It can freeze over very quickly and then you’re diving under ice,” explained Oddur Árnason, chief superintendent of the South Iceland police. This not only makes technical maneuvering difficult, he continued, “it’s downright dangerous for rescuers.”
Rescuers wait for a 48-hour good-weather window"
