INVESTIGATORS WERE trying last night to piece together the final moments of Turkish Airlines flight 1951 before it plunged into a field less than half a mile short of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.
Nine were killed and 84 injured when the twin-engine Boeing 737-800 dropped through low cloud after stalling and losing power, according to survivors. Some were critically injured and the death toll is likely to rise.
The aircraft’s tail snapped off and the fuselage cracked in two as it gouged across the field at 10.31am local time. One engine ended up 50m from the wing.
The soft ground may have absorbed some of the impact. Fire did not break out and within a minute those capable of walking began staggering out of the ruptured plane, stepping over debris and burst suitcases. The plane had been carrying 128 passengers and seven crew.
There was no immediate official explanation for the crash. Below a low cloud base at 243m, there had been good visibility.
The Boeing 737-800 has an excellent safety record; this plane was built in 2002 and last serviced in December, according to local officials. The pilot, a former Turkish air force officer, was highly experienced. The aircrew are among those who died. TK 1951 left Istanbul at 6.22am Irish time (8.22am local time) yesterday on its scheduled flight to the Dutch capital. For the first three hours there were no reports of anything unusual.
Only as it began its final approach to the Polderbaan runway, the newest at Schiphol, did problems begin. One passenger told Turkey’s NTV television that the plane lost height suddenly as it came in to land, striking the ground tail first.
“We were at an altitude of 600m when we heard the announcement that we were landing,” Kerem Uzel said. “We suddenly descended a great distance as if the plane fell into turbulence. The plane’s tail hit the ground.”
Turkish Airlines initially reported that there had been no deaths but television pictures showed a short line of body bags beside the crumpled fuselage.
Of those on board, 72 were Turks and 32 Dutch. The nationalities of the other passengers were not known.
Turkish Airlines had a poor air safety history in the 1970s but has improved. Its last big crash was in 2003, when one of its aircraft missed the runway in heavy fog in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir and 75 people died. – ( Guardianservice)