under water. One of the passengers that was rescued did not survive. The pilot and 3 passengers survived. 4 passengers were killed. On 14 September 1950, a Loftleiðir Douglas C-54 Skymaster (registered TF-RVC, named Geysir) crashed into the Vatnajökull glacier. Six crew members were on this cargo flight from Luxembourg to Reykjavík (the first service for the airline on that route). All occupants survived, but were not found until 18 September, as the crash site was unknown and search efforts focused elsewhere. The occupants were not rescued until 20 September, due to the difficulty of reaching the location on the glacier. On 23 June 1973, a Loftleiðir Douglas DC-8 (registered N8960T) was damaged in a tail-first landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport, when it completed Flight 509 on the Stockholm-Oslo-Reykjavík-New York route with 119 passengers and nine crew members on board. An NTSB investigation found that the accident was caused by a flawed procedure when the spoilers were extended just before touchdown (normally, the spoilers are armed after lowering the landing gear and then extend automatically after touchdown). On 15 November 1978, a Douglas DC-8 (registered TF-FLA), operating for Garuda Indonesia, missed the runway upon approach of Colombo Airport in Sri Lanka during a chartered Hajj pilgrimage flight from Jeddah and crashed. 181 passengers died in the accident, while 74 passengers and 5 crew members survived. Icelandic Airlines Flight 001 was a Loftleiðir flight number, even though the company had merged with Flugfélag Íslands at that time. In popular culture Alfred Eliasson & Loftleiðir Icelandic is a 2009 documentary film from Iceland, which tells the story of the airline and one of its founders, narrated in Icelandic by Arnar Jónsson. References Airlines established in 1944 Airlines disestablished in 1979 Defunct airlines of Iceland Icelandair 1944 establishments in Iceland Icelandic brands