The aircraft had arrived at
Stockholm Arlanda Airport at 22:09 local time after a flight from
Zürich the previous evening and was parked overnight at temperatures of around . About of very cold, flight-chilled fuel remained in the wing tanks. Due to this, clear ice had formed on the upper side of the wings, but was not detected. The aircraft was de-iced with of de-icing fluid, but not checked afterwards for remaining ice by the de-icing personnel or the Pilot-in-Charge, Captain
Rasmussen, which he was required to do by the Scandinavian Airlines "Flight Deck Bulletin/Winterization" given to pilots. The plane departed from Stockholm at 08:47. Shortly after liftoff, pieces of ice broke off and slammed into the fans of both engines, deforming the fan blades sufficiently to disturb the airflow to the compressors. The disturbed airflow caused the compressors to stall and this in turn caused the engines to
surge. As the engines were not throttled down sufficiently, the surges continued. The high loads from repeated engine surges quickly led to the breakup of both engines. From the pilots' point of view, after 25 seconds of flight, noises and vibrations caused by the no. 2 engine surging were first noticed. The flight crew responded by throttling down a little, but an automatic system, ATR (automatic thrust restoration), that had not been described to the flight crew by SAS, simultaneously increased throttle as a response to the asymmetric engine power and reduced climb rate. As a consequence, the engine surges continued. SAS Flight Captain Per Holmberg, who was on board as a passenger, noticed the problems early, hurried to the cockpit, and provided invaluable assistance to the crew. Engine no. 1 surged 39 seconds later and both engines failed at 76 and 78 seconds, respectively, into flight, at an altitude of . The pilot responded to the loss of both engines by pitching the aircraft down in a dive before leveling it, to try to have it glide the longest possible distance without
stalling. The pilots requested a return to Arlanda and attempted the restart procedure, but, with the aircraft emerging from cloud cover at altitude, they chose a field in the forest, near the Vängsjöberg
seat farm in
Gottröra,
Uppland, for an immediate emergency landing. During the final descent, the aircraft hit several trees, losing a large part of the right wing. It struck the ground tail-first, and the tail cone of the plane broke off. The plane slid across the field for , during which the main landing gear of the plane dug marks into the field and sheared off, the nose landing gear broke off, and the fuselage broke into three parts. As a result of the accident, 25 people were injured—two of them seriously—but there were no fatalities. The flight attendants had instructed passengers to adopt the
brace position, which is credited with the lack of fatalities. The flight crew, and especially Captain
Rasmussen, were lauded for the skilled emergency landing in a fast-developing, potentially fatal situation. Rasmussen commented that "few civilian air pilots are ever put to a test of the skills they have acquired during training to this degree". He said he was proud of his crew and very relieved everyone had survived. He chose not to return to piloting commercial aircraft, after experiencing a lack of trust in the machinery he was piloting in simulator sessions following the accident. In 2022 he still suffered from
PTSD from the aftermath of the accident when he was both called a hero and a villain despite him just believing he did the job he was trained for. ==Investigation and recommendations==