Qualla: Swiss International Air Lines Flight 850

Swiss International Air Lines Flight 850: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0. 'We'll take anything at this point.' The moment those words came over the frequency, air traffic control stopped treating Swiss International Air Lines Flight 850 as a diversion and started treating it as an emergency. The Saab 2000 had left Basel that afternoon for Hamburg with four crew and sixteen passengers. It had already been turned away from Hamburg, blocked from Hannover, and thrown off an approach into Berlin. It was 10 July 2002, the storm behind it was the worst summer weather Berlin had seen in fifty years, and the crew were now asking a controller to name any runway in northern Germany they could still reach.

Image: Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Swiss International Air Lines Flight 850: A Different Aeroplane and a Longer Briefing

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0. Flight 850 was supposed to be an Embraer 145. The Embraer was unavailable, so a Saab 2000 was substituted — HB-IZY, named Doldenhorn, five years old, with 12,303 flight hours and 12,069 landings behind it — and the crew briefing was extended by fifteen minutes to cover the change...

Image: Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Swiss International Air Lines Flight 850: The Derecho

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0. What had formed over northern Germany that day was a derecho — a long-lived, fast-moving line of storms that produces straight-line winds along a front hundreds of kilometres wide. Gusts reached 81 knots. In Berlin, seven people were killed: ordinary Wednesday-afternoon deaths, u...

Image: Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Swiss International Air Lines Flight 850: Tegel Says CAVOK

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0. The front got to Hannover first. En route, the weather blocked the turn, and the crew swung east for Berlin instead. Tegel's automatic information broadcast said the field was clear with no significant change expected. The 17:50 METAR said CAVOK, NOSIG. It was wrong, and the inv...

Image: Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Swiss International Air Lines Flight 850: Twenty Miles and a Phone Call

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0. Hamburg control offered Neubrandenburg. The crew turned it down — too far. Then came Werneuchen, a former Soviet air base northeast of Berlin, twenty nautical miles away, with a runway advertised as 1,500 metres. A controller telephoned the chairman of the flying club at Werneuc...

Image: Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Swiss International Air Lines Flight 850: Three Thousand and Five Days

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0. The markings were for the runway that no longer existed. The aircraft ran into the earth bank, which tore off all three undercarriage legs, and slid to a halt on its belly with the fire alarm sounding for the port engine. The crew ran the fire drills on both engines. Everyone abo...

Image: Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland | CC BY-SA 2.0