AMSTERDAM: A Turkish Airlines plane carrying 135 people slammed into a muddy field while attempting to land at Amsterdam’s main airport in misty weather yesterday. Nine people were killed and more than 50 were injured, many seriously, officials said. The Boeing 737-800, en route from Istanbul to Amsterdam, broke into three pieces when it hit the ground short of a runway at Schiphol Airport at 10:31 a.m. The fuselage split in two, close to the cockpit, and the tail broke off. The crash site is about 3 kms from the runway.
A spokesman for investigators said two pilots and an apprentice pilot were among the dead and confirmed that the stricken plane’s flight data recorders had been found and were to be analyzed by experts. Survivor Huseyin Sumer told Turkish NTV television 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 all happened very fast,” Sumer said. He said the crash was over in five to 10 seconds. Hours after the crash, emergency crews still swarmed around the plane’s cockpit.
Turkish Transport Minister Binali Yildirim said it was “a miracle” there were not more casualties. “The fact that the plane landed on a soft surface and that there was no fire helped keep the number of fatalities low,” he said. Experts said that might also have helped avert a fire resulting from ruptured fuel tanks and lines on the underside of the fuselage, which appeared to have suffered very heavy impact damage. Having reached its destination, the plane would have used up a major portion of its fuel.
