VFW 614 accident in Bremen
VFW-Fokker VFW-Fokker VFW.614 · The VFW 614 accident in Bremen occurred on 1 February 1972
From Bremen Airport (BRE) to Bremen Airport (BRE)
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
- 2
- 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
- General aviation
VFW-Fokker VFW.614
- Aircraft type
- VFW Fokker VFW-614
- 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
- D-BABA
- Operator
- VFW-Fokker
- Onboard fatalities
- 1
- Route
- From Bremen Airport (BRE)To Bremen Airport (BRE)
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Estimated position: Bremen, the place the Wikipedia article names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
The VFW 614 accident in Bremen occurred on 1 February 1972. A VFW-Fokker VFW 614 crashed to the ground after a loss of control during a VFW-Fokker test flight, and one person died.
Accident sequence
Since the aircraft's first flight there had repeatedly been anomalies involving flutter in the horizontal stabiliser, which lay in the exhaust stream of the engines mounted above the wings. Various modifications were made. For the test flight on 1 February 1972 the aircraft was fitted with vibration dampers. During the flight test, at an altitude of 10,000 feet and a speed of 220 knots, asymmetric flutter occurred again. Unlike in previous tests, the flutter could not be eliminated by reducing speed. The crew members bailed out of the aircraft with parachutes. First Officer Hans Bardill, who had already once saved himself by parachute from a crashing prototype of a German-built aircraft in the HFB 320 Hansa Jet accident near Madrid, lost consciousness as he jumped and was unable to open his parachute. Bardill fell to the ground and died. The other two crew members were able to land safely on the ground with their parachutes. The aircraft crashed to the ground in a vertical attitude. It struck a snow-covered meadow 200 metres from the runway threshold of Bremen Airport at 14:58.
Investigation and cause
Cause
The cause of the crash was antisymmetric resonant vibrations of the horizontal stabiliser excited by the exhaust stream of the turbines.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Flugunfall einer VFW 614 in Bremen” (revision 269735305, 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: Flugunfall einer VFW 614 in Bremen
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 269735305 · 2026-08-17 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q93514342
- 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 "Flugunfall einer VFW 614 in Bremen" (page 11286451, revision 269735305), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- place the Wikipedia infobox site links (Wikidata coordinates)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- Reviewed correction (2026-09-26): A VFW 614 prototype on a flutter test flight by its manufacturer VFW-Fokker: a manufacturer's test flight, general aviation. The article: "A VFW-Fokker VFW 614 crashed to the ground after a loss of control during a VFW-Fokker test flight"
- 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.