Experts work to identify dead in airline crash

FORENSIC experts worked yesterday to identify the dead in a Turkish Airlines crash that killed nine in the Netherlands, while investigators mapped the exact location of each piece of mangled debris in search of the cause of the crash.

As investigators swarmed the crash site yesterday, the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recordings were being analysed in Paris.

Sandra Groenendal, spokeswoman for the Dutch Safety Authority, said a first assessment of what went wrong, according to black box data, would probably be released by Wednesday.

Five Turks — including both pilots — and four Americans were killed when the Boeing 737-800 plunged into a farmer’s field on Wednesday morning, smashing into three pieces. Two of the dead Americans were Boeing employees.

Marion Laan, a spokeswoman for the Haarlemmermeer municipality, said authorities had no new information yesterday about the injured. Last night, 63 survivors remained hospitalised, including six in critical condition.

Flight TK1951 was coming in from Istanbul with 135 passengers and crew when it crashed about a mile short of the runway at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. One survivor, Henk Heijloo, said the last message he heard from the captain was for flight crew to take their seats. He said it took him time to realise the landing had gone wrong.

“We were coming in at an odd angle, and I felt the pilot give the plane more gas,” he said. He thought the pilot might have been trying to abort the landing because the nose came up.

Mayor Theo Weterings of Haarlemmermeer said yesterday the relatives of the people who died had been informed, but not all the bodies had been officially identified. Once that is done, families will be able to bring the bodies home.

Pieter van Vollenhoven, head of the Dutch agency investigating the crash, said the plane had fallen almost directly from the sky, which pointed toward its engines having stopped. He said a reason for that had not yet been established.