The crew had started their duty at Bodo Airport at 1:30 in the afternoon, working a southbound chain of Norway's short-hop coastal airports: Sandnessjoen, Bronnøysund, Rorvik, and on to Trondheim. They had already skipped one stop at Mosjoen due to bad weather. After reaching Trondheim at 17:52, they turned around for the return leg as Flight 744 -- Trondheim to Namsos to Rorvik, where plane and crew were to spend the night. The Twin Otter, registration LN-BNM, had been in service since 1974 and had logged 40,453 hours. Captain Jan Bjorstad, 43, had been a pilot in command since January of that year. First Officer Trond Hamre, 34, had more total flight time than his captain. Both knew the route. Bjorstad had landed at Namsos 13 times in the previous year; Hamre, 27 times.

The aircraft departed Trondheim at 18:37, climbing to a cruising altitude of 1,500 meters. Namsos reported winds from 250 degrees at 25 knots, gusting to 36. As the crew began their descent plan -- 1,200 meters, then 900, then a turn onto the localizer at 255 degrees, then down to the minimum altitude of 640 meters -- the wind freshened. By 19:01, gusts had reached 40 knots, dead on the nose for runway 26. The crew adjusted their heights slightly but continued the approach. At 19:15:13, the aircraft passed the Namsos Beacon. Seventeen seconds later, the first officer reported visual contact with the airfield. What happened next unfolded in less than ninety seconds: the crew switched from instrument to visual approach in darkness, lost track of their position relative to the terrain, and descended below safe altitude without realizing it.

One young man, nearly unhurt, pulled himself from the wreckage and ran through sleet and rain to the nearest farm at Berg. 'The aircraft has fallen down,' he told the stunned residents. 'You must call for help.' Then he ran back to the crash site. The farm's three inhabitants were the first rescuers on the scene. Several survivors could not move, immobilized by fractures, and the cold -- driven by a southwestern wind -- was already threatening those who had survived the impact. The farmhouse became an improvised triage center. About seventy people participated in the rescue effort, carrying the wounded to the farm for initial treatment before transporting them to Namsos Hospital, the last patient arriving at 22:30. It was Wideroe's fourth fatal accident in eleven years.

The Twin Otter was not required to carry a cockpit voice recorder, but Wideroe had voluntarily installed one. That recorder became the center of a two-year legal fight. The Accident Investigation Board and the Norwegian Airline Pilots Association refused to share the CVR tapes with the Namdal Police District, arguing that criminal use of cockpit recordings would discourage pilots from speaking freely. The pilots' association went further, telling its members not to cooperate with police in any way. The dispute escalated through district courts, a Court of Appeal, and into Parliament, where the Minister of Transport declined to intervene. It was not until August 1995 -- nearly two years after the crash -- that Frostating Court of Appeal ordered the tapes surrendered. Even then, neither the pilots' union nor the investigation board would help decipher the recordings.

The final report, published on July 10, 1996, classified the crash as a controlled flight into terrain. It found no mechanical failure. Instead, it documented a cascade of procedural breakdowns: no callouts during the critical descent phase, a poorly timed base turn that left the aircraft 14 nautical miles from the airport, a premature switch to visual approach without adequate terrain references, and a breakdown of crew resource management after the airfield was spotted. The report contained 26 recommendations and spread responsibility between the pilots, the airline, and the Norwegian Aviation Authority. Wideroe responded with a major restructuring, grounding roughly ten pilots for procedural violations and investing 40 million Norwegian kroner in safety improvements. A SINTEF study commissioned during the investigation had already revealed pervasive gaps in the company's safety culture. In September 1997, the Norwegian Prosecuting Authority decided not to charge anyone -- the direct culpability fell on the two pilots, who had not survived to answer for it.