55 Killed in Crash of Norwegian Plane : None Aboard Survive as Craft Plunges Into Sea Near Denmark

A chartered plane carrying Norwegian shipping company officials to a ship christening in West Germany crashed in the sea Friday, killing all 55 people aboard, Danish rescue officials said.

The twin-engine Convair 440 turboprop plane, belonging to the Norwegian airline Partnair, was en route from Oslo to Hamburg, West Germany. It crashed in the Skagerrak Strait, a heavily traveled shipping route that borders Norway, Denmark and Sweden, leading to the North Sea and the Baltic.

It was the worst crash in Norwegian aviation history. Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland issued a condolence message and other party leaders suspended the campaign for Monday’s general election.

Rescue officials said 32 bodies have been recovered and helicopters and about 30 vessels, including a West German warship and fishing trawlers, were searching for other victims.

Trip Meant as a Reward

“There are no survivors . . . the plane disintegrated,” said Kurt Rasmussen, an official at the Danish Sea Rescue Center at Karup, on Denmark’s Jutland Peninsula. “We just found the main wheel floating and the nose cone.”

There were 50 passengers and a crew of five aboard, Partnair’s managing director, Syvar Leivestad, told reporters in Oslo.

The passengers, most of them top management and half the staff of the Wilhelmsen Lines shipping company, were chosen by lottery for a trip that was meant to be a reward, company officials said. All were Norwegian, the Norwegian NTB news agency said.

Rescuers said most of the bodies were found within a radius of a few hundred yards, which would appear to indicate the plane did not explode in the air.

Officials declined to speculate on the cause of the crash, but did not immediately raise the possibility of sabotage.

“There is no way of finding out the cause of the crash right now, because we haven’t found the black box,” the plane’s flight recorder, said Rasmussen.

The plane, built by General Dynamics, was 35 years old. Its engines were refitted about 20 years ago.

Partnair chief pilot Per Erik Ingjer said that a week ago, he took the plane to Oslo from Canada, where it had undergone a five-week comprehensive maintenance check, including an old-age inspection.

“I tested it and there were no problems,” the pilot said. Leivestad said the plane had flown four or five trouble-free flights since then.

An official of Wilhelmsen said the company had chartered the flight for a christening in Hamburg, NTB reported. He was not identified by name.

Lost Contact

The plane, which took off from Oslo’s Fornebu Airport, was flying at 23,000 feet when air controllers at Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport lost contact with it, Sweden’s national news agency TT reported.

It went down 18 1/2 miles north of Hirtshals, on Denmark’s northern coast, according to the rescue center at Karup. The crash site is 190 miles northwest of Copenhagen.

The West German navy training ship Deutschland and the tender Werra picked up 14 of the bodies, according to the West German Naval Command in Gluecksburg. Other ships and rescue helicopters were at the scene around nightfall.

Leivestad said the pilots flying the charter flight were among the company’s most experienced.