MORE than four years after an Israeli jumbo jet slammed into a crowded housing estate in Amsterdam, killing at least 42 people, fresh information on the crash is sparking a new airline safety scare.
The original investigation of the October 14th, 1992, El Al jumbo disaster established that the crash was a consequence of faulty "fuse pins", which are used to secure engines to the wing, and prompted a series of checks and improvements designed to ensure there could be no repetition.
But in the years since the cargo plane's crash, residents of the Bijlmermeer housing estate where the aircraft plummeted in flames and their doctors and lawyers, have complained of unusually high incidences of illness - respiratory difficulties, abnormal births and more.
An Israeli parliamentary committee, discussing these mysterious illnesses yesterday, appeared concerned they might be a consequence of poisonous fumes released by the burning flame, and specifically by several hundred pounds of "depleted uranium" - that were being used as ballast in the tail of the aircraft.
The chairman of the Knesset's economics committee, Mr Eli Goldschmidt, demanded that El Al immediately remove the depleted uranium it is still using as ballast in several more of its jumbos, and replace it with tungsten "in order to avoid a future disaster".
But El Al's managing director Mr Yoel Feldschu, indicated that it was up to the aircraft manufacturers, Boeing, to authorise the switch, not for El Al to perform unilaterally.
It is understood that Boeing routinely installed depleted uranium as tail ballast in jumbos built up until 1981.
Then, in the wake of what it called "concerns about safety expressed by operators", it began replacing the uranium with tungsten.
But apparently it has never ordered airlines to replace the uranium in existing jumbos, and thus innumerable jumbos, flown by airlines around the world, still carry the uranium ballast material.
A spokesman for Israel's Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) told the Knesset committee yesterday that, while both uranium and tungsten are heavy metals which are dangerous if breathed in, tungsten burns only at much higher temperatures than uranium.
An Environment Ministry expert added that, unlike uranium, tungsten is not radioactive.
The Knesset committee session followed a spate of recent newspaper reports alleging abnormally high illness levels among the 60,000 residents of the Bijlmermeer estate, and amid reports that the Dutch authorities are considering reopening their investigation into the crash.
One newspaper has reported claims that the aircraft was also carrying missiles or missile parts, and that the explosion of this cargo caused the high temperatures in the burning plane, which in turn caused the uranium to burn.
An El Al spokesman, though acknowledging that there were military parts aboard the aircraft insisted yesterday that these did not include missiles or missile parts.