Amsterdam plane crash
- 00:01:29
- ITN
Amsterdam plane crash
Nine people were killed and at least 50 injured when a Turkish Airlines jet crashed at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, Dutch officials have said. The Boeing 737-800, with 127 passengers, including a baby, and seven crew on board, split into three parts when it hit the ground. The plane, which had earlier departed from Istanbul, came down in light fog near the Polderbaan runway, which is furthest away from Schiphol's main terminals. Images showed Flight TK1951 with the tail section of the fuselage broken off and a wide crack just behind the cockpit. Survivor Mustafa Bahcecioglu said: "We are in the middle of a field now, approximately five to six kilometres from the airport. The majority of the passengers are injured but there are people who are not injured. Around 30 ambulances have come here here." Another passenger, Huseyin Sumer, said: "The plane split into three parts. We are calling people to say the situation is not very serious but there might be casualties on the front side of the pane." All flights to and from Schiphol - located around 20km (12 miles) southwest of central Amsterdam - were suspended after the crash but a limited number of flights have now resumed. The A9 road around the airport has been closed. The crash appears to be the worst since an El Al cargo plane hit high-rise apartment blocks in a southeastern suburb of Amsterdam in October 1992, killing 43 people, 39 of them on the ground. The 1992 cargo plane was a Boeing 747. It ploughed into the buildings, setting them on fire, shortly after takeoff after two engines had broken off. The Boeing 737 has long been considered the "workhorse of the sky" and has been the most successful of all the commercial jet aircraft. It has been in production since 1967 and is operated by more than 500 airlines flying to 1,200 destinations. Kieran Daly, editor of news site Air Transport Intelligence, said of Schiphol Airport: "This is one of the best-equipped, most modern and most sophisticated airports in the world. "There is no high terrain anywhere near the airport and pilots have every conceivable landing aid available to them. There are very long, very wide runways and an extremely competent air traffic control service. "This is one of the last likely places in the world for an aircraft accident."
ITN | February 25, 2009
