'Engine problems may have caused plane crash'

Engine trouble may be behind the Turkish Airlines crash in the Netherlands in which nine people died, the head of the agency investigating the accident said today.

Flight TK1951 from Istanbul crashed about one mile (1.5km) short of the runway at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport yesterday morning, smashing into three pieces and spraying luggage and debris across a field. It was carrying 134 passengers and crew.

Investigator Pieter van Vollenhoven said, in comments quoted by Dutch state television NOS, that the Boeing 737-800 had fallen almost directly from the sky, which pointed toward the plane’s engines having stalled. He said a reason for that had not yet been established.

Spokeswoman Sandra Groenendal, of the Dutch Safety Authority, confirmed his remarks and added that stalled engines on the plane were still “one of the possible scenarios” for the crash.

Mr Van Vollenhoven said an analysis of the plane’s flight data recorders in Paris could be completed as early as tomorrow, but his agency would probably not make a preliminary finding until next week.

“We hope to have a firmer grip as soon as possible,” he said, adding that the information retrieved from the recorders was of high quality.

Survivors said the engine noise seemed to stop, the plane shuddered and then simply fell out of the sky tail-first. Witnesses on the ground said the plane dropped from about 300ft (90m).

One survivor, Jihad Alariachi, said there was no warning from the cockpit to brace for landing.

“We braked really hard, but that’s normal in a landing. And then the nose went up. And then we bounced... with the nose aloft” before the final impact, she said.

Despite the catastrophic impact, the wreckage did not burn and dozens of people walked away with only minor injuries.

Mayor Theo Weterings told reporters that 121 people in all were treated for injuries and six remained in critical condition. Another 25 were considered seriously hurt.

At the crash site today, investigators took detailed photos of the wreckage, trying to piece together why the plane lost speed and ploughed into the field.

The passengers and crew came from at least nine different countries, including seven Americans and three Britons. Four of the Americans were Boeing employees.

Most passengers were Turkish and Dutch nationals, but one person each came from Germany, Taiwan, Finland, Bulgaria and Italy. Mr Weterings said the nationalities of 15 passengers still had not been confirmed.

Three of those killed were the Turkish pilots, he said. The identities of the remaining six victims and of four critically injured passengers were still not known.

Families of Turkish victims arrived on a chartered flight from Istanbul and a team of Turkish experts flew to the Netherlands to help the investigation.

Turkish Airlines chief Temel Kotil said the captain, Hasan Tahsin Arisan, was an experienced former air force pilot. Turkish officials said the plane was built in 2002 and last underwent thorough maintenance on December 22.

A retired pilot who listened to a radio exchange between air traffic controllers and the aircraft shortly before the crash said he did not hear anything unusual.

“Everything appeared normal,” said Joe Mazzone, a former Delta Air Lines captain.

The recording was posted by the website LiveATC.net, which captures air traffic exchanges by monitoring scanners near airports.

“Turkish 1951 descending from level 7-0,” one of the pilots said as they neared the airport yesterday morning, referring to the plane’s altitude of 7,000ft.

“Turkish 1951 hello. Descend to 4-0. Speed is OK for ILS 1-8 right,” the controller replied, clearing the airliner to an altitude of 4,000ft, where it would intercept an electronic beam guiding the plane down to Runway 18 Right.

The controller then read out correct radio frequency for communicating with the airport’s tower after landing.

“OK thanks, sir,” the pilot said. There was no indication of any trouble from his voice.

Weather at the airport at the time was cloudy with a slight drizzle.

It was the deadliest crash in the Netherlands since a vintage DC3 crashed in a shallow sea on September 25, 1996, killing 32 people.

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 south-eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.