1989 Tuusula air accident
Fairchild Swearingen Merlin III SA226T · Crash
From Southend, London to Helsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)
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
- 7 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 1
- 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
- 1
- 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
Fairchild Swearingen Merlin III SA226T
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild Swearingen Merlin III SA226T
- 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
- N26-RT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- 7
- Route
- From Southend, LondonTo Helsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Task performance
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Estimated position: Tuusula, the place the Wikipedia article names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
The 1989 Tuusula air accident occurred on 23 February 1989, when a Fairchild Swearingen Merlin III aircraft owned by Predator Oy of Siuntio struck the ground while landing at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. The aircraft was bringing the party of the company's owner, Samuli Lehtinen, back from a leisure trip from London to Helsinki. Both crew members and five passengers were killed instantly in the accident. One passenger survived almost unhurt.
In the dark and foggy late evening the aircraft approached the runway on the correct heading but more than a hundred metres too low, so that it first struck the top of a tree growing on a hill and then the guy wires of the approach light masts on the Tuusula side, and crashed upside down to the ground to the right of the approach lights. The crew and five passengers were killed instantly, but one of the passengers got out by kicking a window out and began walking towards the airport, from where a fire engine came to meet her.
Killed in the accident were businessman Samuli Lehtinen, who had been in the public eye a few years earlier over the bankruptcies of the Tristan group of companies, his common-law wife Pia Ukkola, the married couple Kari and Stina Hyytiäinen, and Markku Hyytiäinen, whose wife Jaana Hyytiäinen was the only survivor. Also killed were the crew members Heikki Juhani Laine and Paavo Galkin.
Investigation and cause
Cause of the accident
The 18-year-old twin-engine Fairchild business aircraft had been brought to Finland only a few weeks earlier, and there had been time to use it only a couple of times before the London trip. At the time of the crash the aircraft was still on the United States register and should not have been flown.
A major accident board of inquiry was appointed to investigate the accident, because the number of victims was large and there were strange features associated with the aircraft's sudden fall. The cause of the accident was determined to be the crew's inability to control the approach flight in difficult conditions in an aircraft that was unfamiliar to them and in poor condition. To reduce speed the pilot had set the engines to idle and, because of a fault in the control, even past that into braking mode, which may be used only after landing during the taxiing phase. The propeller shaft of the left engine could not withstand the torque this caused and broke, after which the approach was continued on one engine, flying too low and without initiating a pull-up.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Finnish Wikipedia article “Tuusulan lento-onnettomuus 1989” (revision 22846356, 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
Finnish Wikipedia article: Tuusulan lento-onnettomuus 1989
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 22846356 · 2024-11-24 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q124342105
- 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
- fi Wikipedia article "Tuusulan lento-onnettomuus 1989" (page 1740199, revision 22846356), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from Wikidata (P17)
- 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 company-owned Merlin carrying its owner's party home from a leisure trip: a business aircraft flown for its owner. The article: "The aircraft was bringing the party of the company's owner, Samuli Lehtinen, back from a leisure trip from London to Helsinki."
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the Finnish Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.