Forty years ago, the most horrific airline disaster to ever occur in the Basque Country happened just outside of my dad’s hometown of Munitibar. Even today, the crash is imprinted on the collective minds of the local Basques – more than once it has come up in conversation when I’ve visited the Basque Country. While Oiz is known for its spectacular views, it also has this dark cloud associated with it.

• On February 19, 1985, a flight from Madrid to Bilbao crashed in the mountains outside of my dad’s hometown of Munitibar. All of the people on board – 141 passengers and 7 crew – died in the crash. It is the worst airline disaster in the history of the Basque Country.
• The plane crashed because its wing clipped a television antenna on the top of Mount Oiz. Authorities concluded that the autopilot had failed to engage and that an alarm indicating too low of an altitude went off, but the pilots misinterpreted the alarm and dropped even lower, low enough to hit the antenna on the peak of the mountain. Thick fog which limited visibility to 2.5 miles also contributed to the crash. Yet another factor was the altimeter design, which was hard to read. And another factor was that the TV antenna had not been on the navigation maps and was too tall for safety.
• The left wing of the plane was completely sheared off because of the impact. The plane rolled to the left and crashed into the trees covering the area. Trees were cut down in a path of more than half a mile before the plane landed in a ravine where it continued to skid before blowing up.
• As can be imagined, the recovery was challenging. Debris spread over a radius of almost 2 miles in the rugged terrain of the Basque mountains. There were no survivors and several bodies were impossible to identify.
• One of the consequences of the crash is that all altimeters were changed in all Spanish planes. The United States had already made such a change due to the penchant for pilots to misread it. While investigators ultimately said the crash was due to pilot error, many people didn’t accept that conclusion, even blaming ETA for bringing the plane down.
• Even as late as 2021, human remains were found on the crash site, which prompted requests to completely clear the site of all vestiges of the wreck. Further, efforts to create a memorial to those lost were also put in motion.

A full list of all of Buber’s Basque Facts of the Week can be found in the Archive.

Primary sources: Iberia Flight 610, Wikipedia; Las 148 víctimas olvidadas de la mayor catástrofe aérea en Euskadi by Beñat Arnaiz y Javier Bienzobas, El Diario Vasco