The Nicosia Britannia disaster was the death of 126 passengers and crew on a Bristol Britannia

Bristol Britannia

The Bristol Type 175 Britannia was a British medium-to-long-range airliner built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1952 to fly across the British Empire...

 of the Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 airline Globe Air when it flew into the ground 3.5km (2.2 miles) south of Nicosia Airport, in Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

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Accident

The Britannia was operating a charter flight bringing tourists from Bangkok in Thailand to Basel in Switzerland. The flight stopped at Colombo in Ceylon and then Bombay in India with the next stop due to be Cairo. The crew decided to fly to Nicosia rather than Cairo which was closed to due bad weather. The aircraft was on the third attempt to land on Runway 32 in a violent thunderstorm when it flew into a hill near the village of Lakatamia and burst into flames.

Two German and two Swiss passengers survived, three of them were seriously injured and were treated at a United Nations field hospital near Nicosia, the fourth was reported to be unhurt.