Air crash at AMS

[αdαmsκι]

         At least nine killed as Turkish Airlines plane crashes near Amsterdam |
            World news |
            guardian.co.uk
   

$hit. Nasty. The pictures from the Guardian are pretty graphic too. At least nine dead and no obvious course, tho I'm sure the investigators will find something when they get to work.

On a different note, I'm travelling back to London today from The Netherlands, but the Eurostar was cheaper than the plane so I'm not flying.  Given the chaos that will be taking place at Schipol it's probably a good place to avoid.

[Somnolent]

Looks like most of the pax may have been  very lucky.

[TimO]

Just been reading through an interminably long thread on PPRUNE.

There's nothing much too detailed about what happened on there.  It sounds most like the aircraft was coming in with a high angle of attack and hit tail first before flipping forward and the nose hitting the ground, which explains why the tail is broken off, and the structural damage just behind the cockpit.  Exactly why the aircraft ended up in this position is pretty much unknown, lots of speculation on there, but no plausible sounding ideas.  It seems likely from the comments that a stall may have had some effect, but again why the aircraft would have ended up stalling is unknown.

Out of the 127 people on board, all three crew on the flight deck appear to have died, as have six passengers.  It sounds like another six people are unlikely to survive, amongst 24 severely injured.  That's not a good set of numbers, but it could have been much worse.

Some of the clearer images:

http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/ANP-9259371.jpg

http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/ANP-9259316.jpg

http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/crashschiphol2.jpg

[Ivo]

Out of the 127 people on board, all three crew on the flight deck appear to have died, as have six passengers.  It sounds like another six people are unlikely to survive, amongst 24 severely injured.  That's not a good set of numbers, but it could have been much worse.

Up untill now these six passengers are still alive but critical. I guess that by now they have a fair chance of survival. Had the plane crashlanded elsewhere they'd have had slighter chances, the crash site is directly next to a motorway and 2 academic hospitals very near by (abt 15-25km). Part of the passengers was completely unhurt and assisted in evacuateting trapped or wounded passengers.
Again a lot of luck in an airplane accident, landing without hurting anyone on the ground but still near help.

[Jaded]

I'm intrigued there was no fire. Maybe because there were very few sparks as it came down in a field, or maybe not much fuel?

[BornAgainCyclist]

I'm intrigued there was no fire. Maybe because there were very few sparks as it came down in a field, or maybe not much fuel?

Because the wings remained intact there was no fuel spillage - BBC News

[Jaded]

Ah, thanks.

[Ivo]

Both the motors sheared off immediately so the main source of ignition was seperated from the main fuel tanks.
No reports on critically wounded passengers anymore in Dutch news, only 6 seriously wounded. So it looks like the death toll reamains at 9. Pilots identified, other 6 victims not yet identified.