TAROM accident near Békéssámson

The TAROM crash near Békéssámson occurred on 16 June 1963. On that day, a TAROM Ilyushin Il-14P on an international charter flight from Munich-Riem Airport to Constanța Airport crashed near the village of Békéssámson in southeastern Hungary. All 31 occupants died in the incident – TAROM's first fatal air accident. It is thus the deadliest civil aviation accident in Hungary and, after the crash of an Antonov An-24 near Hejce, the second-deadliest air accident in Hungary overall.

Accident sequence

The aircraft was to make a non-stop flight from Munich-Riem to Constanta. At around 10:00 it reached Hungarian airspace. In the airspace over the Budapest area, the captain noticed a minor technical fault but did not request permission to land. The aircraft flew on. As it approached the border with Romania, the first officer requested clearance to descend to 3,050 feet, which was then granted. The first officer then signed off with the Hungarian air traffic controller. Contact was then established with Romanian air traffic control, which acknowledged the aircraft's call. Immediately afterwards, the crew reported a technical problem, asked Arad Airport whether oil was available there, and requested assistance, as the oil pressure in the aircraft had dropped.

Two or three minutes later, air traffic control in Arad was informed that one of the aircraft's engines had failed, and a further minute later an emergency was declared. Shortly afterwards, radio contact with the aircraft was lost. The captain had planned an emergency landing at Arad Airport, but a fire had broken out due to the technical problem. The Ilyushin was already smoking over Hódmezővásárhely and was visibly burning on the outside when it reached Békéssámson.

At 10:52 the aircraft crashed two kilometres from the centre of the village of Békéssámson and 300 metres from the main road from Tótkomlós to Hódmezővásárhely.