On saturday, 24th of january 2004, the departure of a 21 year old plane type McDonnell Douglas MD-82 signed SE-RBE owned by the airline Nordic Airlink was scheduled for 9:30 local time at the swedish airport Stockholm-Arlanda. It was a charter flight to Grenoble in France with 126 passengers, so the 162-seated plane was not booked up.
   
At about 10:50 the plane had made a good way on its route. Probably it passed Copenhagen westerly on airway UN850 und entered the german air space via the Michaelsdorf beacon. The possible route was east of Hamburg, passing the beacons at Warburg and Karlsruhe, then using the airway UN869 over the western part of Switzerland, westerly of Geneva leading to Grenoble.


The map shows the probably route.

At this time the smell of fire was detected at the area of the back bord kitchen, so the pilots reported an emergency and decided to land at the airport Hamburg-Fuhlsbuettel.

   
At 10:53 (local time, same time zone as Stockholm) the control room of the fire department of Hamburg was alarmed by the airport fire service. The informations says that a plane type MD-80 with smoke in the area of the back board kitchen was awaited. Based on the situation and the dimensions of the plane (unloaded mass about 36.5 tons, maximal mass for takeoff nearly 67 tons; spread nearly 33 meters, length about 45 meters) the operation was categorized as "big plane accident". So the planned units were alarmed:
  • amulance (fire station Alsterdorf)
  • medical unit (german red cross)
  • 2 fire companies (fire stations Alsterdorf and Barmbek)
  • battalion chief "East"
  • command bus (fire station Berliner Tor)
  • officer for environmental protection (fire department technical station)
  • chief fire officer
  • commanding medical doctor
  • 3 swap body trucks (fire stations Altona and Billstedt / fire department technical station) with swap body "solid extinguishing agent" and 2 swap bodies "foam"
  • volunteer fire department Eimsbuettel
  • volunteer fire department Fuhlsbuettel
  • volunteer fire department Altona communication unit (for the command bus)
  • volunteer fire department leader "North"

Click on the red button of the shown pager to take a look at the next rows of the message which alarmed the members of the volunteer fire department Eimsbuettel.   
The starting letter "A" in the pager-message stands for "alarm" (could had been an "I" for "information"), the enclosed "FLUNFG" is the short term for "big plane accident". "Flughafenstraße" is the street name in the offical address of the airport. The following numbers and short terms are standing for the alarmed stations / units. The "1A" at the last row of the message means that the first address of the pager had been used (others are for special situations) and that it is an "full alarm" (other possibilities: "first aid", "small alarm", "stand by").

   
At 11:29 the photo below this was made. The plane landed secure and had been evacuated. No one was injured. A check shows, that an oven in the back kitchen overheated.


The photo (C) Stefan Kunert / www.kunertus.com shows the plan after its landing. Click here for display it in full size!

The passengers continued their journey with an other plane in the afternoon.

Some more informations are available at these newspaper articles (german) from 26th of january 2004:
Hamburger Abendblatt
Hamburger Morgenpost
Die Welt

By the way: In some newspapers the plane was titled as DC-9. That was a mistake. The original DC-9 had been developed further and after a few steps the type "DC-9 Super 80" was established. This strongly modified version (longer body, longer wings, new engines) was named "MD-80". Later types (MD-81, -82, -83) get also higher powered engines.

Many informations for this report were given by users of the "MD-80 International Forum". The above photo of the plane is shown with permission of the photographer. Thanks for the help!

Norbert Koelln

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