By Toby Sterling
The Associated Press
 AP Photo/Peter Dejong Turkish Airlines plane with 135 people aboard slammed into a muddy field while attempting to land at Amsterdam’s airport Wednesday. Nine people were killed, officials said. |
HAARLEMMERLIEDE, Netherlands — The host of a popular Dutch television show was half-dozing with her head against the window of the Turkish Airlines jetliner when she was shocked awake by the sight of the ground looming up through the mist and drizzle.
There was no warning from the cockpit to brace for landing when the Boeing 737-800 with 134 people on board slammed into a muddy field Wednesday about two miles short of Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, breaking into pieces.
The fuselage tore in two near the cockpit and the tail was ripped off. Despite the catastrophic impact the wreckage did not burn and nearly everyone — 125 people survived. The nine dead included both pilots.
TV host Jihad Alariachi was among those who walked away unscathed, scrambling out of the wreckage through emergency exits or cracks in the shattered fuselage.
“The ground was coming near by, really near by,” Alariachi told Dutch radio station BNR. “Then we braked really hard ... The nose went up. And then we bounced ... with the nose aloft.”
She and her sister escaped through an exit “onto the wing, and then we were in a field, walking around,” she said, her nose bloodied and her shoes missing.
Survivor Mustafa Bahcec, his forehead bruised, recalled: “The back of the plane was completely gone. It was a blood bath, a terrible sight.”
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 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 300 feet.
“You see that because of a lack of speed it literally fell out of the sky,” he told NOS radio.
Four Boeing employees traveling on business were aboard the plane, according to Jim Proulx, a spokesman for the company. All four are based in the Seattle area, he said, but he would not provide further details until their families had been notified.
He said Boeing was sending a team to provide technical assistance to Dutch safety officials as they investigate. The plane’s flight data recorders were recovered and were to be analyzed by experts.
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.
As with Wednesday’s crash, most of the survivable accidents have occurred at or near airports, and in most cases the pilots maintained control, maneuvering to soften the final impact.
“What’s notable about all those is that we’ve seen a number of recent-model aircraft involved in accidents that have been survivable,” said William Voss, president of the independent Flight Safety Foundation based in Alexandria, Va.
“Decades of lessons have obviously been applied to cabin design and its survivability, and the cabin crews are doing their jobs on evacuation,” he said.
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.
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.
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.
Candan Karlitekin, the head of the airline’s board of directors, told reporters that visibility was clear at about 5,000 yards. “Some 550 yards before landing, the plane landed on a field instead of the runway,” he said, adding the plane’s documents were checked and there was no maintenance problems.
Turkish Airlines chief Temel Kotil said the captain, Hasan Tahsin, was an experienced former air force pilot. Turkish officials said the plane was built in 2002 and last underwent thorough maintenance on Dec. 22.
Turkish Airlines has had several serious crashes since 1974, when 360 people died in the crash of a DC-10 near Paris after a cargo door came off. More recently, in 2003, 75 died when an RJ-100 missed the runway in heavy fog in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.
Boeing’s 737 is the world’s best-selling commercial jet, with more than 6,000 orders since the model was launched in 1965.
The 737-800, a recent version of the plane, has a “very good safety record,” said Voss. “It has been involved in a couple of accidents, but nothing that relates directly back to the aircraft.”
Associated Press Writers Mike Corder in The Hague, Slobodan Lekic in Brussels and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.