Iberia Flight 261
Spantax for Iberia Douglas DC-3/C-47A-75-DL · Ditching
From Tenerife Norte-Ciudad de La Laguna Airport (TFN) to La Palma Airport (SPC)
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- Event fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 26
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
Douglas DC-3/C-47A-75-DL
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-3
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- EC-ACX
- Operator
- Spantax for Iberia
- Onboard fatalities
- 1
- Route
- From Tenerife Norte-Ciudad de La Laguna Airport (TFN)To La Palma Airport (SPC)
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Not plotted · Not plotted: the Wikipedia article gives no coordinates, and its site names no town or airport that matches exactly.
From the Wikipedia article
On 16 September 1966 a Douglas DC-3/C-47A-75-DL operated by Spantax for Iberia on Iberia Flight 261 (flight number: IB261, callsign: IBERIA 261), a domestic scheduled flight from Tenerife to La Palma, had to be ditched in the Atlantic Ocean after an engine problem. One passenger was killed during the subsequent evacuation.
Accident sequence
Only two minutes after take-off from Los Rodeos Airport, the left engine oversped. When the usual procedures to be applied in the event of propeller overspeed were not successful, the captain tried to feather the propeller, but this also failed. The aircraft lost altitude and the captain had to carry out a ditching in the sea. After the ditching, a swift evacuation of the aircraft was carried out. During the evacuation one passenger obstructed it. The aircraft sank five minutes after the ditching. Except for the passenger who had obstructed the evacuation, all occupants were able to leave the aircraft. The passenger refused to leave the aircraft and was ultimately killed when it went down.
Investigation and cause
Cause
The accident investigation concluded that the accident had occurred due to an overspeeding propeller on engine No. 1. As the wreckage was never recovered, the cause of the propeller malfunction could not be determined.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Iberia-Flug 261” (revision 252195408, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Iberia-Flug 261
- Article
- Iberia-Flug 261
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 252195408 · 2025-01-12 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q93990501
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Iberia-Flug 261" (page 11278370, revision 252195408), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- none
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- flight number in the article title
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the German Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.