Spanair accident at Madrid

[justme69]

The Pilots' union letter to Spanair stating their concerns was basically your usual generic mostly-political-agenda in faith of a pending 1,100 jobs cut and pay reduction for another 700 employees plan propossed by the company recently. The pilots complained that "bad management" and bad "ground operation caos" was starting to affect fly security by means of "more stressed enviroments" among "delays, cancelled flights, insufficient man power".

I think it's fair to assume it's not "directly" related to the unfortunate accident. I have taken 6 Spanair flights between the Canary Islands and Madrid in the past two weeks prior to this accident and indeed one was cancelled and several delayed.

Spanair has promised more technical information about the accident to the families Saturday at 6pm.

Nothing else I have seen reported on the press except that whatever little wind there was (raging between about 7 and 9 knots) was actually tail-wind. Spanair approves of MD-82 fit to take off at up to 10kt of tail wind.

The flight had been overbooked. An additional couple of passengers was holding a ticket and reportedly checked-in luggage, but reached the gate 3 minutes late and were denied boarding. The flight operated at full PAX, so I don't know where they were planning on sitting them even if they had reached the door on time, not to mention that the airplane returned to gate after the "overheat warning red light" (likely a warning for a outside-air-temperature probe system malfunction) came on and finally took off over 1h late.

Again in low-ish air density, high-ish temperature conditions, presumably max. weight with good visibility on a "brand-new" long-ish airstrip where they reached V1 (perhaps a bit later than "normal"), VR, nose up, front gear left the ground, likely the back gears too w/o visual or reported anomalities other than perhaps a "bit weird nose angle" (no info on flaps/slats) and then perhaps moved erratically while airbone (survivors not clearly stating if felt "side-to-side" movement ocurred airbone or on the ground) to then for unknown reasons "attempted to land" (or falling down) again, bouncing-around, reportedly hitting briefly the ground with a wing (which doesn't seem to have left any large debri on the strip or produce extensive visual damage to the airplane structure at that point, but was reported by source cited as viewing the security footage), presumably sustaining some damage due to somewhat violent touch-down over max. landing weight (witneses saying things like "started to break in pieces", but no pieces seem to have been reported that close to the strip) and lost direction veiring off the runaway and later crashing against obstacles at presumably high speed a few hundred meters later with perhaps at least one thrust reverser properly deployed, leaving a river of fire along its path.

Skid marks were left on the landing strip that seem to show all three wheels were touching ground "properly" and braking on a "normal looking" straight line for a short while and then turning somewhat steeply to the side (significant strip length was still available in the front), exiting the runaway to the terrain in-between strips where it crashed very violently (hardly any pieces larger than a car where left at all of the whole plane and debri and victims expanded a significantly large area, thus the high victims count).

There is no clear account reported exactly like that, but it's what can be infered by the vague comments reported by press from witnesses or "oficials".

All that has been said repetidly and clearly is that "no fire was visible until it had 'hit the ground' 'several times' (bouncing around).

Some survivors seem to have been "ejected" from the plane landing in a small creek. One of them approached the wreckage and helped rescue two children. Most survivors seem to have suffered at least one (usually more) fractures (mostly limbs, limbs+ribs or limbs+skull). Many were "low mass" people (3 CHD, several women). There were possibly a few more inmediate survivors, but the fire spread quickly (vegetation didn't help, one survivor with internal burns from inhalation, one survivor helping rescue a woman's child at her petition only to return and find her and her other child 'unrescuable', one survivor and one of the first ground rescue personnel accounting for some people shouting "I'm soffocating" or "help"). Rescue efforts were very prompt and effective, but very challenged by the fire, very large spread-out scenario and not so easy terrain access.

One initial survivor died soon after in the hospital, leaving the total count to 19 current survivors. Only 4 of those remain in severe condition. Doctors are hopefull for all, but one passenger remains critical. Several are basically fully recovered (except for the fractures, which obviously take weeks/months to properly heal). About 50 of the victims have been identified, with the remaining aprox. 100 still in need for DNA identification, as physical matching was not possible. All victims accounted for, although it took an extra day to find the remains of the two initially unaccounted victims, a baby and another small children, at the devastation scene.

So sorry for all the victims and their families :'-(

Like it's normal in us imperfect creatures, we all would like to know what happened and how to try to avoid it and find some strange confort in trying to figure out the truth. I guess it's our way of dealing with the pain and frustration, specially knowing that with a damaged flight recorder the (hopefully) definitive answer on the cause may be many months, if not years, away. At this point, this accident doesn't seem to have a clear-cut probable cause and it seems further speculation on the many possible scenarios could be pointless without more information, so I guess we'll have to sit and wait.

Descriptions like this could help understand the damage that can results of high speed impact, aborted take-offs, unnecessary uneven terrain/vegetation around landing strips, fires, etc, and perhaps will help to avoid it happening again.