10401

Information

This aircraft was constructed at Aérospatiale's helicopter plant in Marignane, France, in early-1988. It came to Sweden later the same year and became the first Super Puma in Sweden. Once delivered it went through an extensive modification process to live up to the Air Force's specifications. The helicopter type got the designation HKP 10 and this machine was named "91", nicknamed "Blosset" and "Birgitta".

The helicopter served as a search and rescue aircraft and was stationed at various Air Force Bases throughout Sweden. It operated parallel to BO105s and Bell 204s, but outlived them both.

ARMED FORCES HELICOPTER WING
1998 saw the structural birth of a new joint helicopter force - the Swedish Armed Forces Helicopter Wing. From 1 January 1999 the unit merged the helicopter operations from all the three military branches (Air Force, Army, and Navy) together. The new organisation had no impact on the HKP 10s other than providing them with a slightly wider range of tasks.

THE ACCIDENT
H-91 was lost in an accident in the sea near Lid? south of Ronneby, on 1st of November 2005. The crew of six and its two additional passengers was out for a night-time hoist exercise when the helicopter collided with the water during the approach to an Air Force boat. The pilots managed to deploy the floats, which kept the cracked helicopter afloat, although with a separated tail boom. All eight people onboard survived, but one of the passengers experienced a compression fracture.
The root of the accident was determined to be a number of flaws in the organisation that caused an insufficient cockpit work and subsequently lead to the crash. The aircraft was a write-off after 5 553 hours and 17,5 years in service.