Tomorrow (10 April) is the 40th anniversary of the air disaster in the Hochwald district of Switzerland involving an Invicta International Airways Vickers Vanguard, G-AXOP, operating a flight from Bristol Lulsgate Airport, as it was then known, to Basel-Mulhouse Airport.
The flight was organised as a shopping and sightseeing trip to Basel for people living in small towns and villages in north Somerset and was to return the same day.
It departed Lulsgate around 0830 on that fateful Tuesday carrying 139 passengers, mainly local women, and a crew of six.
The approach to Basel-Mulhouse took place in poor weather conditions and the two pilots became disorientated having made two approaches before the aircraft struck a wooded hillside. The aircraft was destroyed.
108 people perished - 104 passengers, the two pilots and two cabin crew members. The Swiss Federal Commission of Enquiry attributed the accident to a 'loss of orientation during two ILS approaches carried out under instrument flight conditions' but also listed a number of contributory factors.
The survivors were in the rear of the aircraft which broke away on impact.
Accident report is at this link:
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources...5%20G-AXOP.pdf
What made this disaster particularly poignant was the number of women who were killed leaving 55 children motherless.
At the time many people had never flown in an aircraft and it was likely that this was their first ever flight for many on board. There are groups of marked graves in a number of local village churchyards where those passengers who lost their lives are buried.
I was brought up in one of the affected villages (Wrington) in the immediate post war years and, although I was living in Bristol at the time of the disaster, I still remember the day as if it were yesterday. The devastation it brought to so many families is indescribable.
My thoughts will be with them tomorrow.