Air Littoral Flight 701A

On 30 July 1997, Air Littoral Flight 701A, an ATR 42 regional turboprop operating a scheduled passenger flight from Nice, France to Florence, Italy, crashed on landing when it ran off Florence Airport's runway and into a ditch next to a motorway embankment. There were no fatalities among the 14 passengers on board, but the cockpit section was severely damaged, and the captain died of his injuries four days later.

Accident

At around 10:30 on the day of the accident, following an uneventful flight from Nice, the aircraft prepared to land at Florence's Peretola airport, where the weather was reported as CAVOK, that is good visibility and no cloud; the wind was light and variable. The crew elected to land on runway 23, which has a 620 m displaced threshold. Such choice was described as unusual, in the given conditions; eighty percent of the aircraft operating on the airport that day had landed on the opposite runway, runway 05.

At 10:36 the aircraft was observed touching down far into the runway and at a much higher speed than usual. It then overran the runway end, crashed through the airport perimeter fence and into a ditch next to the nearby A11 motorway. The right engine stopped when the propeller contacted the ground, but the left engine kept running for the following 45 minutes, while rescue operations were taking place.

All passengers were rapidly evacuated, but due to the damage to the cockpit section, it took about an hour to extricate the two crew members. The instructor captain was hospitalized but succumbed to his injures four days later; the captain undergoing training and 13 other passengers were injured.