Turkish plane crashes while landing in
Amsterdam
THE HAGUE : A Turkish Airlines passenger plane with 143
people on board crashed on Wednesday while attempting to land at
Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, aviation officials said.
Although officials in Turkey said that no one had been killed in
the crash, a Dutch television reporter said he had seen four or
five body bags, while the CNN-Turk news channel said that one
person had died and 20 were injured.
"It's a Turkish Airlines (THY) plane which crashed as it was
approaching the runway," Melanie Smieder of the airport's press
service told AFP. "All air traffic is blocked," she added.
Dutch television showed footage of the plane on the ground, broken
into three pieces with emergency crews swarming around the wreck
just metres away from what appears to be residential houses.
NOS television reported at least four body bags had been filled
after the crash and that about 50 people were seen escaping from
the wreck unharmed.
However Turkey's Transport Minister Binali Yildirim said that there
had been no fatalities.
"The good news is that there was no loss of life in the accident,"
Yildirim said in televised remarks.
THY chief executive officer Candan Karlitekin told a news
conference in Turkey that there were 127 passengers - including a
baby - and seven crew aboard the Boeing 737-800.
"About 20 people were injured, but this is not a definite figure,"
he said.
Karlitekin explained that the aircraft had crashed about 500 metres
(550 yards) from the runway as it was trying to land.
"It was unable to reach the runway and landed in a field," he said,
adding that the aircraft had broken into three pieces.
"The fire services and ambulances are on site," she added.
Dutch and Turkish media reports said there 135 passengers and eight
crew members on board the aircraft, which left Istanbul at 08:22 am
(0622 GMT) for Amsterdam.
One passenger aboard the plane told Turkish television that the
plane's tail hit the ground in the landing.
"We were at an altitude of 600 metres (2000 feet) when we heard the
announcement that we were landing," Kerem Uzel told the NTV news
channel.
"We suddenly descended a great distance as if the plane fell into
turbulence. The plane's tail hit the ground ... It slid from the
side of the motorway into the field."
Tuncer Mutluhan, the representative of a private Turkish bank in
the Netherlands, said it was a matter of seconds between the
realisation that the plane was in trouble and the actual
landing.
"While were were making a normal landing, it felt like we fell into
a void, the plane lost control, suddenly plunged and crashed," he
told NTV. It all happened in three or five seconds ... There was
panic after that."
Schiphol is Europe's fifth largest airport by passenger
numbers.
Nearly 48 million passengers passed through the airport in 2007,
according to the last figures issued by the Airports Council
International (ACI), an industry body. - AFP/ms