LAAX concludes internal investigation into gondola incident

On January 5, 2022, an incident occurred on the cable car that runs from Laax Murschetg to Crap Sogn Gion. The gondola traveling toward the mountain station first came into contact with trees at Larnags. The load bar attached to the gondola then touched the snow and ground as it continued on its journey. The load barrel did not lose any of its cargo and was only slightly damaged. There was no actual impact with the ground. The gondola operator stopped the gondola immediately when he noticed it grazing the snow cover. The abrupt stop caused some of the 35 passengers to fall. One passenger suffered a minor injury to her finger as a result.

The Weisse Arena Group sets the highest standards for the safety of all its facilities and the training of its staff. Over the past 10 years, CHF 60 million has been invested in new facilities. Next year, new facilities will be built at a cost of around CHF 80 million. Existing facilities have been modernized over the past five years at a total cost of CHF 9 million. This shows that passenger safety is a top priority for the Weisse Arena Group. For this reason, the company immediately took all necessary steps to investigate the causes of the incident.

Too much weight on the load bar

On January 5, 2022, in addition to the official notification to the Federal Office of Transport (FOT) and supplementary to the investigations by the criminal authorities and the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board (SUST), a comprehensive internal investigation was immediately launched. According to these findings, the incident was caused by a chain of human errors. These led to an overload for operation with a load attached to the bottom of the gondola. This enabled the load barrel to touch the ground. The errors in detail:

Both gondolas of the cable car have a built-in load measuring system that displays the total payload and sounds an alarm in the event of overload. In one gondola, the load measuring system had to be deactivated in December due to its persistent malfunction. Passenger transport is also permitted without such a system, which is why operations continued as normal. However, such a system is mandatory for transport trips with underload. Due to the fact that there was no internal instruction that transport trips may only be carried out with the gondola with an intact system, the trip in question was undertaken at all.

The second error in the chain occurred when loading the load barrel. When loading weight stones, the machine operator mistakenly assumed that each stone weighed 500 kilograms. In fact, however, it weighs one ton, which meant that loading six such weights resulted in an excess weight of 3 tons, or a total weight of 10.4 tons. The permissible total weight of the gondola for passenger transport was not exceeded, i.e., from a purely mechanical point of view, the cable car is designed for such loads. Since the aerial cableway runs approximately 2 meters above the ground in a few places when fully loaded due to its length profile, and the load barrel hangs about 2.4 meters below the gondola floor, a payload of 7.5 tons must not be exceeded for transports with load barrels. This ensures that the load barrel cannot touch the ground.

As the last link in the chain, the gondola operator could still have prevented the accident. Due to the faulty load measurement, he had no way of detecting the overload before departure. However, when he touched the first trees with the gondola and the underload, he should have interrupted the ride or at least sent a radio message. Instead, he continued until the underload touched the ground. When he noticed this, he reacted very well by immediately activating the emergency stop.

No danger to passengers

As part of its internal investigation, the Weisse Arena Group worked with lift manufacturer Garaventa to assess whether this incident could have had potentially serious consequences. Neither direct contact between the gondola and the ground, nor derailment of the vehicle, nor a tear in the haul rope or suspension cable were considered realistic scenarios. In each case, additional safety measures would have been in place to prevent such catastrophic scenarios. All of these safety systems functioned and continue to function flawlessly. Against this background, it can be concluded that, to the best of human knowledge, there was never any danger to passengers beyond the risk of the gondola tipping over due to the emergency stop.

Various measures taken immediately

The Weisse Arena Group took immediate action immediately after the incident. Since the incident and until all investigations have been completed, no transport trips with passengers and underload will be made. At the request of the Weisse Arena Group, the manufacturer of the cable car, Garaventa, checked all systems on the cable car in question as a precautionary measure on the day after the incident and found no defects. The manufacturer of the defective load measurement system, which is not required by law for passenger transport, will repair it on January 20, 2022. The staff, namely gondola operators and engineers, have been informed of all the facts surrounding the incident. As a precautionary measure, all relevant systems on all lifts throughout the ski area will be checked again.

As a medium-term measure, a comprehensive external security audit will be commissioned. This will examine whether, despite the existing extensive security measures in the systems approved by the authorities, there are still security gaps. The audit will also identify areas where additional security could be provided by supplementary systems. Employee training and education, training materials, communication and emergency plans, and internal organization will also be reviewed.

Full cooperation with the criminal authorities and the SUST

Since the day of the incident, the Weisse Arena Group has been cooperating fully and transparently with the Graubünden authorities and the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board (SUST) in its own interests. The incident was reported to the Federal Office of Transport on the day it occurred. The findings of the internal investigation are being shared with the authorities as part of the ongoing investigations.

Deep regret

"We deeply regret what happened on January 5 and sincerely apologize to the passengers," says Markus Wolf, CEO of the Weisse Arena Group. "We immediately did everything we could to find the possible reasons for the incident. We are convinced that an open culture of error reporting enables everyone to learn. That is why we decided to publish the results of the internal investigation immediately after its completion."