Preliminary report on serious aircraft incident

On 26 December 2012, Norwegian Air Shuttle serviced a regular passenger flight to Kittilä airport in Finland with a Boeing 737-800.

When intercepting the glide slope on the ILS-approach, with autopilot engaged, the crew experienced that the aircraft unintentionally pitched up. As a consequence of a very high nose attitude, airspeed dropped rapidly and aircraft came close to a stall.

The investigation has revealed that de-icing fluid could ingress into Tail Cone Compartment and freeze on in-put arms on the Power Control Units and jam normal elevator operations on Boeing 737s.

The preliminary report is issued in Norwegian and English and is found on our Norwegian pages for ongoing investigations.