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Turkish Airline 737 Crash in AMS

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Amish RakeFight

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/world/europe/26amsterdam.html?hp


February 26, 2009

9 Dead as Turkish Plane Crashes Near Amsterdam

By CAROLINE BROTHERS and SEBNEM ARSU
PARIS — A Turkish Airlines jet carrying 135 people crashed into a field on its approach to Schiphol Airport outside Amsterdam after a flight from Istanbul on Wednesday, killing nine people and injuring 50, airport authorities and Turkish officials said.

In Ankara, Suat Hayri Aka, a senior transportation official, told a news conference that 20 of the injured appeared to be in serious condition. Three of the dead were crew members, according to Turkish news reports.Television images showed the aircraft, a Boeing 737-800, lying fractured into three parts after it slammed into the ground while approaching the runway. The aircraft did not catch fire.

Witnesses said the plane’s engines broke off and landed some about 100 yards from the wrecked fuselage in a plowed field.

Michel Bezuijen, acting mayor of Haarlemmermeer, close to Schiphol, told a news conference: “At this moment there are nine victims to mourn and more than 50 injured.”
He said there was no immediate word on the cause of the accident.
In the confusion following the crash, reports varied over how far the site was from the runway. Initial reports said it was three miles from the airport, but later versions put it closer.

In a statement, the Amsterdam airport authorities said the plane, Turkish Airlines flight TK1951, which left Istanbul at 8:22 a.m. on Wednesday, made a crash landing along a highway near the airport with 128 passengers and 7 crew members on board.

Flights to and from the airport, halted because of the accident, were gradually being resumed, the airport said.
The crash took place in calm weather with a light drizzle. Unlike a deadly accident in Madrid last summer when a Spanair flight crashed while taking off, no fire broke out during Wednesday’s crash.

Tuncer Mutlucan, a passenger who survived the crash, told NTV, a private broadcaster in Turkey, “It was the back of the plane that hit the ground. We left the plane from the back. My colleague and I saw people stuck in between seats as we were trying to leave and we tried to help them.”

“ It all happened in something like ten seconds,” Mr. Mutlucan said
Candan Karlitekin, the chairman of Turkish Airlines, said most of the injured were seated at the back of the plane.
“There was nothing extraordinary about the weather conditions, vision capability was 4,500 meters. Around 500 meters away from the landing strip, the plane landed in a field. The plane was broken into three parts, as you all saw in pictures.”

Mr. Kotil said that the pilot, Hasan Tahsin Ari, was one of the airline’s most experienced pilots. The company was planning a flight from to Amsterdam from Istanbul for relatives of the crash victims.

The International Air Transport Association representing 230 scheduled airlines, said last week that the number of fatal air crashes increased to 23 in 2008 from 20 the year before. However, fatalities decreased to 502 from 692 in 2007.

Schiphol was the scene of a catastrophic air crash in 1992 when an El Al cargo plane hit a high-rise building in the Amsterdam suburb of Bijlmermeer, unleashing an inferno in which 43 people died.

In more recent incidents, 50 people died two weeks ago when a Continental Airlines flight from Newark to Buffalo, New York, crashed into a house about five miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

All passengers and crew escaped from a US Airways plane when the pilot ditched it in the Hudson River shortly after takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia airport earlier this year.

Caroline Brothers reported from Paris, and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul.
 
Wow. No ones bothered to even comment on this crash. Perhaps this is more news on PPrune.

A 737 essentially has the op to make a soft field landing and ends up breaking in three with several fatalities and many injured, with some serious.

Just thought it's a testament to the difference in the Hudson ditching. AMS is surrounded by flatland farm fields which make it an ideal plot to land on. One would think that given the choice between a river and flatland to put it down, one would choose the latter.
 
More recent article...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/25/plane-crash-amsterdam-turkish-airlines


The Turkish Airlines plane that crashed in Amsterdam would have taken a "pretty severe whack" as it hit the ground but appeared likely to have been at least partly under control when it came down, an expert said today.

Kieran Daly, editor of the online news service Air Transport Intelligence, said the range of possible causes of the accident was so wide that it was impossible to speculate at this stage.
"What you can say is that there's been a reasonably severe impact because it's done a lot of damage to the aircraft," he told the Guardian. "A 737 doesn't break up all that easily. You've got to get a pretty severe whack to do that and you would expect some people to be quite seriously hurt.

"The fact that there wasn't a fire is indicative that you didn't have a grotesquely out of control situation. If a plane falls from the sky then you immediately have catastrophic explosive damage. Here it looks like the aircraft was either partially or wholly under control when it touched down."

Jane's aviation analyst Chris Yates said: "A couple of eyewitnesses suggested that the plane lost power, lost propulsion. If those reports are true it potentially indicates that the engines were starved of fuel or that the plane itself simply ran out of fuel."

This theory could be supported by the fact that medics could be seen treating survivors propped up next to the plane's fuselage, Yates said.

"They wouldn't be that close if there was a small glimmer that there was potential for a fire to break out."

One person posting on the Professional Pilots Rumour Network (PPRuNe) highlighted the fact that fire crews did not appear to be mopping up or putting foam on spilt unignited fuel.

But Gideon Evers, a spokesman for the International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations, said there was no indication the crash had anything to do with the fuel level.

Regulations require all commercial flights to carry ample reserves, he said. According to mandatory limits, a passenger airliner must carry sufficient fuel to get to its destination, remain in holding patterns for 45 minutes, possibly divert to an alternate airport, hold for another 45 minutes, and then carry out a normal approach.

Other experts said the fact the plane landed in a muddy, plowed field may have helped limit the number of casualties, by absorbing much of the force of the hard impact. It may also have helped avert a fire resulting from ruptured fuel tanks and lines on the underside of the fuselage.

Daly said incidents such as this, and the recent survival of everyone on a US Airways plane that crashed into the Hudson River in New York, demonstrated the improvements in aircraft design and building in the last 15 or 20 years.

The 737-800, which entered service in 1998, is part of Boeing's current family of narrow body planes. Some 2,578 737s are in service around the world, 1,490 of them 737-800s.

The safety record of the aircraft is "outstanding", Daly said.

"The 737-800 is a very modern aircraft. It's extremely well designed and well built and it will be around for a long time to come. If you have a situation where it crashes the prognosis for the passengers is very, very good."

Yates said: "It's a good solid aircraft." Turkish Airlines had a "relatively good" safety record, he added. "They didn't have a particularly good record around a decade ago but they've taken great strides to improve safety since then."
 
If it is another dual engine failure, talk about black swans.

Re: The Black Swan

I've coincidentally once met Nassim Nicholas Taleb at a B & N as he was being escorted around the store by an employee. As the employee walked past me, I had asked where I might find The Black Swan. To my surprise, he told me that the gentleman he was with was Taleb. We shook hands (I gave him some high praise as well) and he gave me an autographed copy.

Oh yeah...

Not sure if you know this author, but I ran into Malcolm Gladwell a few weeks ago in NYC. His books are really good as is his staff writing for the New Yorker magazine. It was kind of awesome to chat with him as I find his writing very engrossing. Check out some of his books.
 
Looks like they are reporting that the both pilots and a someone in the jumpseat were killed. Very sad indeed.
 
Anyone Notice that there was NO evidence " Fire".. first impression asks if the tanks were dry??

I don't think Turkisk airlines uses dispatchers... could have made a difference.. RIP Crew.. and others..
 
"The Dutch Safety Board reported, that the three pilots were crushed by a panel, that intruded the cockpit from their back."

Man that sucks to be killed by the CB panel.
 

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