Two jets from Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) and one from Norwegian Air were involved in two separate collisions within the space of 40 minutes at Oslo’s main airport at Gardermoen Thursday evening.
Norwegian is blaming SAS for one of the collisions, claiming that the SAS jet started backing away from the gate before it received clearance from the airport tower. It collided with an arriving Norwegian Air flight from Trondheim at around 7:45pm.
No one was injured in the collision, but passengers were evacuated. Jo Kobro, spokesman for OSL Gardermoen, told Norwegian Broadcasting that there was material damage to both aircraft, to the wing of the Norwegian jet and the tailwings of the SAS jet.
Norwegian claimed the damage would be expensive to repair, costing “several million kroner,” according to one airline spokesman. “In addition we have to take the aircraft out of service,” he said.
An SAS spokesman said the SAS’ jet’s departure from the gate occured “according to procedure,” but the airline was waiting for the results of a closer investigation into the accident. SAS wouldn’t comment further pending the results.
SAS suffered a second collision earlier Thursday evening, when one of its jets was hit by a mobile passenger bridge connecting the aircraft to the terminal. Operators lost control of the gangway when it was supposed to be fastened to the newly parked aircraft, and the jet had to be taken out of traffic for the damage to be assessed.
The two accidents were “very unfortunate, both for us, and for our passengers, said Christian Kamhaug of SAS. “But all our passengers got to where they were going, albeit somewhat delayed.”
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