Plane crashes on landing at Schiphol airport

[WC_EEND 9]

At around 10:31AM (local time) a Boeing 737-800 of Turkish Airlines crashed when attempting to land on the "Polderbaan" (Schiphol's most northern runway). Eyewitnesses said that the plane was plying too slow and the tail went down first. after that the wole plane came down and broke in 3 pieces. The middle piece slided on trough the fields (or "Polders") and came to a stop roughly 2km further. The Dutch TV says that at least 9 people died and 81 were wounded.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Could have been a lot worse.

Story

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/02/25/turkish.plane.amsterdam/index.html

[Martin892 4]

Immediately after the crash people climbed out of the plane, 9 dead so far

[Martin892 4]

81 wounded? I heard "more than 50 including serious casualties"

[GMT 389]

booring

no fire no nothing. were's the action?

no, seriously. very bad for the families of the 9 dead. sad loss that is. but then again, It could have been way worse than "just" 9 deaths.

I wonder why the plane didn't catch fire tho... Rumours say the plane ran out of fuel, witnesses say there were no engine noises, but officials deny the no-more-fuel-story, even tho there's some hints leading to this conclusion, like no fire, close to the runway where it should land, eyewitness' reports...

little scary tho that there's yet another phase of aircraft accidents atm.... the Hudson landing, the Buffalo crash, the helicopter crash off the scottish coast, a couple of smaller plane crashes and emergency landings, now this crash near Schipol.

encouraging news for pilots in formation...

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: WC_EEND The middle piece slided on trough the fields (or "Polders") and came to a stop roughly 2km further. quote>

It slid for 2 kilometers? What, was the ground covered in Astroglide or something?

[Aontan 0]

This year isn't shaping up to be a very good one for the aviation industry... 

edit: A good slideshow with audio from the Air Traffic Control tower at Schiphol can be found here.

[Barbarossa 51]

.

  Edited September 7, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[WC_EEND 9]

Originally posted by: Duke87

Originally posted by: WC_EEND The middle piece slided on trough the fields (or "Polders") and came to a stop roughly 2km further. quote>

It slid for 2 kilometers? What, was the ground covered in Astroglide or something? quote>

that's what was said in the extra news report at 12:15PM (local time) on the Belgian TV (it's much less I know)

[thepokemaniac 18]

...

Wow. So sad, and to think I was at Schipol just 4 years ago...

It is really wierd that there have been so many plane crashes lately!

[Eʟᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ 273]

News Story

Quote from: CNN

(CNN) -- A Turkish passenger jet crashed as it tried to land at Amsterdam's main airport Wednesday, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 55, Dutch airport authorities have said.

The Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800, which had 127 passengers and seven crew members according to the airline, broke into three pieces on impact in a field near Schiphol Airport.

The injured included both crew and passengers, said acting mayor of Haarlemmermeer municipality Michel Bezuijen.

The flight data and voice recorders have been recovered, he said, but investigators still need to determine what, if anything, the pilots said in the moments before the crash.

A news photographer at the scene said she saw an unknown number of bodies lying under a white blanket, Maaike Voersma, a journalist with Dutch newspaper De Pers, told CNN.

A passenger on the plane who spoke to Turkish network DHA said he saw injured people trapped and squeezed between the seats when he walked off the plane.

Flight 1951, which originated from Istanbul, Turkey, was trying to land at Schiphol when it went down at about 10:40 a.m. local time (4:40 a.m. ET), Dutch airport officials said.

At least three crew were among the dead.

"There are still three crew members in the cabin," said Bob Steensma of the Dutch Justice Department. "I'm sorry to say they are dead. We leave them there because we have to investigate the cockpit before we take the cockpit apart."

All the passengers, however, had been removed from the plane as of about 5 p.m., officials said. Roads around the crash site had been blocked to traffic.

Six people were critically injured, Ineke Van Der Zande of Amsterdam Emergency Services told reporters at a briefing. Twenty-five passengers were severely injured, she said, and 24 others were lightly injured. The conditions of the other 31 people were not immediately known, she said. Some 60 ambulances transported 84 people to 11 hospitals throughout the region, she said.

Witnesses said they saw the nose of the plane pitch up suddenly before the crash, according to RTL journalist Greg Crouch.

The plane was broken in three pieces. One tear was in front of the wing, splitting the "Turkish" logo in two, and a larger tear was farther back along the fuselage.

Most of the injured were seated toward the back of the plane, which sustained the most damage, a passenger on the plane told Turkish station NTV. Many of the passengers simply walked off the plane through the cracks in the fuselage, witnesses told NTV.

Medics treated passengers on the ground next to the buckled hulk of the plane, while firefighters and police examined the aircraft.

Emergency exits were wide open and there was no signs of fire damage to the fuselage. Also visible was one of the aircraft's engines, apparently separated from the shattered remains of one of the wings.

The plane landed in a farmer's field near the airport, RTL journalist Greg Crouch told CNN. He said the weather at the time was partly sunny with no wind or rain.

Witnesses said they saw the nose of the plane pitch up suddenly before the crash, Crouch said.

A bank manager who was a passenger on the plane told NTV that there were no emergency announcements. The crew's last word to the cabin was an announcement to fasten seatbelts and prepare for landing, the bank manager said.

He said he felt the pilot giving more power to the engines before feeling "turbulence," then a sudden drop. He described the crash as similar to a sudden impact that was over in a matter of seconds.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it is sending a team of investigators to Amsterdam to assist in the crash investigation.

Kieran Daly, of Air Transport Intelligence said the impact had been severe but it could have been survivable because of the lack of fire. He added that there had been vast improvements in the materials used to build airplanes, meaning they did not burn as easily.

Daly also said that the Boeing 737-800 is a reliable aircraft that has been successful and safe in service.

"They really are pretty much state-of-the-art airliners with every imaginable technical benefit the industry has come up with over the years," Daly told CNN.

"You would be optimistic that they would be quite survivable in an accident." Daly said the Turkish aviation industry has a "pretty good record" of safety, and that Turkish Airlines, the national carrier, has a "very good record."

Turkish Airlines said it has 52 Boeing 737-800s in its fleet. They can carry up to 165 passengers each, the airline said.

The airline's last accident was of a small commuter jet in 2003, he said. It was a fatal crash that happened at a remote airfield in eastern Turkey, he said. "Their mainline operation is safe," Daly said. "Their pilots are well thought of."

The last accident at Schiphol Airport happened in December 2003 when an EasyJet flight carrying 103 passengers to London collided while with a lamppost while taxiing during icy conditions, according to Aviation Safety Network's Web site. The crash caused significant damage to the aircraft, but no one was killed.

The last fatal incident at the Amsterdam airport happened in April 1994 when a KLM aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff as it tried to return to Schiphol. Three of the 24 passengers and crew members on board were killed.quote>

Pictures

^{Pictures from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7909940.stm}

Must have been a pretty bad crash, although I don't think it is the worst one I've seen. I have to agree it is weird to have three major plane crashes in two months...

[Easy Bakes 253]

Wow looking at those pictures its incredible that there was no fire.

[duack 14]

Yes, rather. But on the other hand, aviation safety is so much more advanced now that even if we have a bad year, it wont ever be as bad as it used to be in the 90's.

[GMT 389]

yes safety increased a lot in the last decade(s).

But even tho there's some terrible incidents from time to time, it's still one of the safest ways to travel. In Germany alone, there's by far more people dying every year in car accidents than people die in plane crashes all over the world.

Still to many deaths in aviation, no doubts, but considered how complex air traffic and it's vehicles are and all the possibilities of fatal malfunctions, it's still amazing that there's comparatively few serious incidents.