Emergency landing Air Maroc on EHAM june 6th
 

An Air Maroc Boeing 737-400 (CN-RMF) made an emergency landing short before 22:00 local time at Schiphol airport, because of a left engine failure short after takeoff. Flight AT-685 left from Schiphol for Nador, experienced an engine fire/failure and after a slow climb and low turn above the city of Haarlem returned to land on the polder runway 18R. Crew and passengers (162) have left the plane safely.

A firetruck tipped over on the way there too. There was a photo of it, but apparently that's from another accident a while ago. Media reports state that the people in the fire truck are fine.

From local news: the plane was able to taxi to the gate on its own. They also report birdstrike as a possible cause.

Groot alarm op Schiphol - Binnenland - Telegraaf.nl [24 uur actueel, ook mobiel] [binnenland]


Mayday call. Engine fire shortly after takeoff. Plane flew low over Haarlem & returned to Schiphol. Major 'alarm' at Schiphol - full emergency response. In and outbound traffic delayed for several minutes during emergency landing. Sight of what appeared to be a 'burning' plane flying overhead caused some panic to break out among witnesses around Schiphol. Landing was without incident - no injuries. A fire truck toppled enroute to incident - no injuries.





Twitter photo: Inciden schiphol airport, plane on runway,5th runway ,pssngrs... on Twitpic






AMSTERDAM - Bij de luchthaven Schiphol is een zondagavond even voor tien uur een vliegtuig in de problemen geraakt. Een toestel van Royal Air Maroc heeft na brand in een motor een noodlanding moeten maken. Na een 'mayday'-oproep van de piloten werd groot alarm geslagen en rukten de hulpdiensten met groot materieel uit.


http://images2-telegraaf.nl/multimed...el_728402d.jpg Twitteraar '4wdtravel' plaatste deze foto op twitter, gemaakt vlak na de noodlanding Foto: 4wdtravel/Twitpic






Dat hebben bronnen rond Schiphol zondagavond gemeld. Het vliegverkeer heeft vanwege de noodlanding een aantal minuten stil gelegen.
De noodlanding op de Polderbaan is goed verlopen en het toestel staat veilig aan de grond. De Luchtverkeersleiding Nederland (LVNL) laat weten dat het toestel op eigen kracht naar de gate kon rijden. Er zijn geen gewonden gevallen door de noodlanding.
De Boeing 737-800, met bestemming Nador, raakte kort na opstijgen vanaf Schiphol in de problemen. Het toestel vloog vervolgens nog een laag rondje over Haarlem en keerde daarna terug naar Schiphol. Het is nog onduidelijk hoeveel mensen er in het vliegtuig zaten.
Grote paniek
De noodlanding zorgde voor grote paniek in de omgeving van Schiphol, omdat meerdere mensen het brandende toestel over hebben zien vliegen.
Een brandweerwagen die op weg was naar de plek waar het toestel zou landen, kantelde onderweg. Dat gebeurde op het terrein van de luchthaven, liet het Korps landelijke politiediensten weten. Bij dit ongeval raakte niemand gewond.

Of course, the a/c was reported to be "dumping fuel" on its way back to AMS :hmm:

Toestel Air Maroc met brandende motor terug naar Schiphol

Quick translation:
Those residing in the area around Schiphol airport feel they have narrowly escaped disaster. Residents of the town of Vijfhuizen state the aircraft dumped kerosene while overhead.

Oh dear :}

'According to eyewitnesses the plane was flying lower than 100 meters.'

Groot alarm op Schiphol - Binnenland - Telegraaf.nl [24 uur actueel, ook mobiel] [binnenland]

Video

Video: Voorzorgslanding RAM-toestel Schiphol na botsing met vogels - Luchtvaart.tv

Birdstrike after take-off, engine failure and return.
No engine fire.
Looks like a job well done

Volkskrant:
Translation:
"The National Police Service Corps concludes after a first investigation that no errors have been made by the Flight Crew during the emergency at Schiphol airport last night. The emergency was caused by a birdstrike. The Dutch Safety Board investigates the incident.
According to a spokesman the collision with the birds caused major damage to one of the two engines, and the fuselage of the aircraft. The engine did not caught fire, but was shutdown according to standard procedures. There was a lot of smoke.
...
The captain reports a collision with 'many big birds, probably geese'
...
The emergency landing did not cause disruption in the air traffic. The aircraft of Royal Air Maroc will be on the ground for at least two weeks. The airline sents its technicians from Casablanca to the Netherlands to do the needed repairs on the aircraft. Based on the results of the National Police Service Corps research, the Public Prosecution Service decided not to further investigate this case."


The geese strike again...

ATCast

Thanks for this update. Sounds like a good balance of responsibilities between the two agencies :ok:

Nicely done Royal Air Maroc Crew.

:ok:

If it was all so nicely done , why would many people in Haarlem comment that the plane was so low they thought it would crash well short of Schiphol?

I thought the clim rate on single engine was still good enough to achieve at least a thousand feet or more?

Surely height = additional safety in case of a flight in trouble?

Is there a reason for a plane on one engine to stay so low (some say maximum 100 metres, 300 ft) during the 180 turn back to Schiphol?

Ever tried to guess an altitude? I have, was never right. There is nothing as unreliable as an 'eyewitness'.

For instance some eyewitnesses said they saw the B734 dumping kerosine, wich is very interesting...as that type doesn't have the capabillity to do that!

vanHorck, you make the mistake of BELIEVING what you read. Non aviation people (and aviation people for that matter) may not be that skilled at calculating height over the ground. The public in that area are not used to see a relatively large airliner at "circuit height" over their houses. A B737-800 flying straight and level at a perfectly legal 1500-2000 feet may seem (to the eye) a lot lower than it actually is. Had the aircraft indeed strayed below minimum safe altitude you can rest assure that the authorities would have investigated the incident further.

van Horck:

I actually thought about trying to answer your questions and then I had a serious outbreak of common sense and realised that it would simply be a complete waste of time.

Don't forget that people who live there are used to departures with all engines working. That means a certain altitude. In this case that altitude was probably half of what they normaly see or hear and therefore quite unusual.

Pictures here
http://www.scramble.nl/forum/viewtop...7914&start=555

They were lucky that only eng#1 was hit. If the other also ingested a goose than she was doomed for sure.

Good job by the crew.

The net path on a twin engine is minimum 2,4% on 1 engine,so at low speeds it is less then 1000 ft/min

Thank you for the nice mix of answers. Obviously any good landing in such a circumstance is an excellent landing, and fab that no one got injured. A dry Hudson landing on one engine it seems to have been.

I'm aware of the unreliability of non-pilot witnesses. Probably even pilots included. I was just surprised he may have been relatively low. As a PPL i intended the question as follows (sorry English not being my mother tongue):

Would a 737 with Engine Failure on Take Off (after a single engine birdstrike) be trained to continue the climb initially to an altitude of ..... (feet) or to level off initially and immediately initiate a return to the field?

Pictures of the toppled-over firetruck that was on the way to the aircraft. :}
http://www.noordhollandsdagblad.nl/m...0_1713964j.jpg
http://www.noordhollandsdagblad.nl/m...2_1713965j.jpg

And plane damage pictures:
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_AGoOHDpGP_8/TA...0/IMG_0234.jpg
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_AGoOHDpGP_8/TA...0/IMG_0235.jpg
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_AGoOHDpGP_8/TA...0/IMG_0236.jpg
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_AGoOHDpGP_8/TA...0/IMG_0237.jpg
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_AGoOHDpGP_8/TA...0/IMG_0238.jpg
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_AGoOHDpGP_8/TA...0/IMG_0239.jpg

At least 4 hits, must have been scary.
All too understandable to choose for an immediate return. Well done Air Maroc!

Geese were not the biggest risk at AMS, I guess there will be some more focus on them.
If I were a goose I would avoid Schiphol, Foie Gras in high demand!

Nice documentation pictures:ok:

About what is expected for an 8 lb bird fully ingested at takeoff RPMs

Quite a different outcome from the Hudson River event.

I wonder what part of the engine damage was from the birdstrike directly and what part was caused be the unbalanced engine wobbling away.

Good job.

Isn't it about time geese were fitted with and trained in the use of TCAS?

Lobby your politicians and watch this fly ...

Airbus Birdstrike Threat Awareness notes:

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Tail strike in 1% of cases..

What does a wobbling engine have to do with a bird wrapped around the avionics door and a dent on the opposite site of the fuselage?
Looks like a flight of geese to me. Lucky the other engine didn't take any..

at first I thought you were making an Airbus joke---seriously:}

:ouch:

What puzzles me is why we still don't know at exactly what altitude they overflew Haarlem with all these live-flight trackers around nowadays. The MSA following a departure off 19L with an immediate right turn is 1700 feet. I assume the crew would at least try to reach that altitude. Overflying a city at 1700ft with one engine at MCT may be quite unsettling for people on the ground, especially with one engine spitting out feathers and engine parts.

From the route flown it looks like the crew didn't get/take the time to read any checklists..

Schiphol komt met vogelradar | nu.nl/binnenland | Het laatste nieuws het eerst op nu.nl

Translation:
Airport Schiphol will start using a unique radar system which can recognize individual birds and predict their flight pattern, the newspaper Trouw reports.

The system is called Robin Lite and was designed by TNO. The number of birds at Schiphol has increased in the past few years and is a danger to aircraft.

With the radar the birds can be tracked better. Incidents, like with the Boeing 737 from Royal Air Maroc should become less common with this system.

Birdstrikes
The number of birdstrikes with planes around Schiphol has almost doubled in the last year. In 2008 there were four birdstrikes per 10000 aircraft movements in which birds entered the engine of a plane, in 2009 this number has risen to more than 7.

Schiphol plans to introduce bird radar system this year for experimental trials.
It will be a version of the Robin (radar observation for bird intensity) system which was developed the Dutch innovation thinktank TNO http://www.tno.nl for the Dutch airforce & is supposed to be able to detect birds from a height of 1 meter and also supply information as to which sort (eg: small or large) by detecting wingspan.

Vogelradar op Schiphol - Binnenland - Telegraaf.nl [24 uur actueel, ook mobiel] [binnenland]


Use of ROBIN system cuts birdstrikes by 50% around Dutch military airports (In English) TNO - ROBIN: Radar Observation of Bird Intensity


Schiphol struggles with overflying geese problem - admits they do not have any control over the situation. Geese fly overhead in this area where there is much pasture for them to feed. Alarm bells already rung 18 months ago about hazards of rising bird population around the airport, primarily geese. Regional taskforce created to reduce numbers by culling birds & treating eggs to make them unhatchable. Birdstrike incidents rise to 7 per 10,000 aircraft movements in 2009 from 4 in 2008 - apparent increase could be result of Schiphol's increased attention to birdstrike incidents. The issue is a priority one & the airport has 16 employees working around the clock to deal with the problem of birds on and around the airport.

'Geen grip op ganzen rond vliegveld' - Binnenland - Telegraaf.nl [24 uur actueel, ook mobiel] [binnenland]

76-er, stick to playing with your Flight Simulator :rolleyes:

Uhhhh, nothing probably. . . see above.

@Avman: Nah, I prefer my 'own' left seat on the 747-400ERF if you don't mind and let my kids play FS-X..:E

Keep climbing until you reach/exceed the related MSA. A shallow climb or even almost level segment (around 200fpm) can be expected at MFRA (minimum flap retraction alt - 1000' AGL usually) to allow for clean up. At airports such as EHAM, where terrain isn't a factor, this will involve climbing ahead on the extended runway centreline until reaching MSA. Once there, the usual steps are to devise a plan with the aid of the QRH (and other information available). In this case i.e severe damage, it will be to 'land at the nearest suitable airport.' Please also remember that ATC would be fully aware of their problem. It would be their decision to vector the aircraft over Haarlem (knowing that it was single engine) once the crew had accepted/requested radar vectors. At an airport such as AMS I would be very surprised that the crew would be wishing to navigate their a/c by any other means. Work load would have been high in the flightdeck (much checklist negotiation, system analysis, crew involvement) and ATC will always be there to help. My philosophy would be to allow them.

In an emergency amsterdam ATC will provide you with a discreet frequency for subsequent communication with them. Once "able to manoevre" they will vector you for return to a runway of your choice.
So unless they were manoevring on their own, which I doubt, it was under radar vectors that they crossed the towns.

I suspect that this was at 2000 feet.

Crunk, see what you mean now.. can't say. Engine is indeed as unbalanced as can be.
About the vectors over Haarlem: a left turn would have brought the plane over Amsterdam and Amstelveen, so even worse.
Time available a track to/over the coast would have been preferable, but in their situation I would have preferred to stay near the field as well.

Overflying bulit up areas
 

I would also consider the fact that ATC at EHAM were only too aware of previous analysis relating to decisions to vector aircraft over built up areas. The Bijlmer accident in 1992 where an El Al Cargo 747 crashed in to an appartment block in the eastern suburbs actually overflew central Amsterdam two times as it was postioned for an approach to RW27. As I recall from the report, ATC were not fully aware of the actual problems that the crew were experiencing (both engines on the right wing sheered off causing severe control problems - this led to the actual report concluding that recovery would have been virtually impossible). I believe that mis-communication from the El Al crew combined with ATC using varied assumptions were analysed in the report. I am certain that current controllers at AMS are all well briefed on this event.

The first time though, was during the (uneventful) climb-out, before engines 3 & 4 fell off.

Neither were the crew, probably, since they reported "engine on fire" while said engine was already on the bottom of a lake. Moments previously, they had reported "we lost engines 3 & 4" probably meaning to say they lost thrust (and interpreted as such by ATC) but most likely they were not aware they quite literally lost them.
The inboard engines on a 747 are not visible from the flight deck, the outboard engines just very barely, and being a cargo there were no reports from the passenger cabin...

Two Weeks Ago at AMS,

Taxied from Hotel stands with permission to cross 36C for 36L departure. Reported a flock of 12 swans (flying perfect vic formation) at 30 feet flying south-north right up the middle of 36C. Tried for 3 mins to talk ATCs eyes onto them with no success. Seemed to me a lack of concern to what I considered a major hazard.

Certification of our engines do not take into account, encounters with the likes of a single swan/goose never mind multiples of the buggers!

Had over 50 birdstrikes in flying career; little ones cause little or no damage thank God. However, have seen enough of what one medium-sized can do if it hits in the wrong place.

18 years military, 7 years airline and the risk assessment on the civil side is miles away from where it should be!!!

Willing to be shot down on this, but what the hell !!

Remember, we are told statiscally a double engine failure is impossible, well tell that to Sully and Im sure he won't buy you a beer!!

Reader not a Writer

You may have misunderstood :)

A double engine failure has a probability of 1 in a million for all causes and and 1 in 10 million for other than crew error causes. It's only statistically improbable against independent causes that a lot of pilots seem to worry about while dozing for dollars (tongue-in-cheek mode)

Sully demonstrated that it is entirely possible to survive with a double engine failure.

But back to the subject event.

After seeing the pics, this was an extremely close call. I'm afraid that a very bad result would occur if this gets repeated at V1+ You are correct in that the engines and aircraft are not designed to accomodate running into a flock of geese at V1+ whether twins or quads so a large ounce of prevention, avoidance etc. must be regulated.

The issue in this case appears to be an airport bird flock on the runway ala Elmendorf etc.

The pilots must report flocks of this type directly, if seen on the ground, and the airport authorities must take immediate action to close the runway until the birds are moved.

I'm not sure why this event happened or where the loophole is.

Did any crew actually see a flock of geese on the ground near this runway that day and did they report the same? I hestitate to get into the subjectivity of transient bird flocks on the move, but this flock appears to have been on the ground and on a runway.

Strange, bird control is a continuous ops at SPL and they are always eager to shoot some flares on the first opportunity.
You say they were going N-S along 36C. As you were crossing that runway it means it wasn't in use (at SPL crossing active is not allowed), maybe that's why they were less concerned

From reading the Dutch print media, this incident is being viewed as a very serious one which could have ended badly. Who knows how close the 2cnd engine was to being struck.

The airport management already raised the alarm about the issue of birds nearly 2 years ago. According to statements made by Schiphol there are no resident birds on the airport grounds itself - the airport has measures in place to ensure this.

The problem is that the airport is located in a prime area for large birds such as geese where they can feed & rest. Thus, the issue is of birds & flocks originating from outside the Schiphol grounds, which overfly the airport as they move from one location to another.

I think its reasonable to assume this Air Maroc incident will have set off some major alarm bells at Schiphol, which will now be focusing even more energies & expertise into managing the problem than was previously the case (it was already high on their priority list apparently).

As it is, a version of the bird-detecting radar system developed for the Dutch air force 'ROBIN' is apparently set for introduction this year for experimental trials.