HAARLEMMERLIEDE (Netherlands) - A TURKISH Airlines jetliner plummeted out of the mist and plowed into a muddy field Wednesday near Amsterdam's main airport, but nearly everyone on board - 125 people - survived. The nine dead included both pilots.
The Boeing 737-800 was en route from Istanbul to Amsterdam carrying 134 people when it suddenly lost speed and fell out of the sky about two miles short of the runway at Schiphol Airport, investigators said.
SIX of the injured were in critical condition, 25 were seriously hurt and 24 had slight injuries, health authorities said. Survivors were taken to 11 hospitals including an emergency field hospital set up by the military in the central city of Utrecht.
There were 72 Turks and 32 Dutch citizens on board, the Turkish ambassador to the Netherlands, Selahattin Alpar, told the Anatolia news agency. -- AP
Possible causes
INVESTIGATORS will explore a wide range of possible causes, ranging from weather-related factors to insufficient fuel or loss, navigational errors, pilot fatigue or bird strikes. Experts say initial results could be made public soon because of the sophistication of the Boeing 737-800s black box, although the full report will likely not be ready before the end of the year.
Weather at the airport at the time of the crash was cloudy with a slight drizzle.
EXPERTS say crashes involving modern airliners are more survivable due to engineering advances that have resulted in strengthened structures and fire retardant technologies used for cabin seats and furnishings, as well as better emergency training of cockpit and cabin crews.
The most dramatic example of passenger survival was the Hudson River landing last month of a US Airways Airbus A320 that lost engine power when it struck a flock of birds. All 155 passengers and crew lived despite the watery landing.
The jetliner broke into three pieces upon impact: the fuselage tore in two near the cockpit and the tail was ripped off. Despite the catastrophic impact, the wreckage did not burn and scores of people walked away.
Survivor Huseyin Sumer said he crawled to safety out of a crack in the fuselage.
'We were about to land, we could not understand what was happening, some passengers screamed in panic, but it happened so fast,' Mr Sumer said on Turkish NTV, adding that the crash was over in 5 to 10 seconds.
Another survivor, Jihad Alariachi, said there was no warning from the cockpit to brace for landing before the ground loomed up through the mist and drizzle.
'We braked really hard, but that's normal in a landing. And then the nose went up. And then we bounced ... with the nose aloft,' she said, adding that she and her sister scrambled out an emergency exit.
More than 50 people were injured, about half of them seriously. Authorities said the toll could have been far higher if the plane had not gone down in mud, which lessened the impact and helped avert a fire from breaking out in the ruptured fuel tanks and lines on the underside of the fuselage.
In addition, having reached its destination, the plane would have used up most of its fuel, lessening the chances of a fuel-driven fire. Authorities would not say whether the plane sent out a distress call before the crash.
'The fact that the plane landed on a soft surface and that there was no fire helped keep the number of fatalities low,' Turkish Transport Minister Binali Yildirim said, adding that it was 'a miracle' there were not more casualties.
The head of the Dutch Safety Authority, Pieter van Vollenhoven, said the plane appeared to have lost speed before crashing and witnesses said it dropped from about 90 metres (300 feet).
Investigators said two pilots and an apprentice pilot were among the dead. Hours after the crash, emergency crews still swarmed around the cockpit, where the pilots' bodies were later removed.
A retired pilot who listened to a radio exchange between air traffic controllers and the aircraft shortly before the crash said he didn't hear anything unusual.
'Everything appeared normal,' said Joe Mazzone, a former Delta Air Lines captain who flew with the carrier for 23 years. 'They were given clearance to descend to 7,000 feet.'
Just before the end of the 52-second recording - captured by the website LiveATC.net - the last thing heard is the controllers giving the tower frequency to the pilots and instructing them to get clearance to land, said Mr Mazzone, who lives in Auburn, Alabama. He added that the pilots acknowledged the instruction.
There was no way to tell from the web recording if there was more communication between the aircraft and the officials at the airport or exactly how long the exchange came prior to the crash, though Mr Mazzone said the point where the transmission ended would likely have been 2 to 4 minutes before the plane would have normally landed. -- AP
