Dutch TV just did a phone interview with one of the passengers.

Normal flight up to final approach, reports of turbulence/instability after which the plane sort of fell out of the sky into the field.

Some 15 pax were able to evacuate the aircraft straight away and helped other passengers out of the plane. But they did not have the tools to help passengers stuck in the aft end of the plane.

He commented that the emergency services were quickly on the scene and took over rescue efforts.

Passenger was unhurt by the way and sounded very composed. Wants to go home but is being held in a farmers hangar close to the scene because they want to perform medical checks on anybody who was on board, but obviously the wounded go first.

Dutch TV also reports that they were relatively lucky. A mile earlier and they would have ditched in the "ringvaart", a 20-25 meter wide canal, and a mile further ahead they would have crashed on the highway.

Aircraft 'flipped over'????? I think if that was the case the damage would be considerably more than it was! Much more likely that all the dirt/rocks that would have been kicked up by the 'landing' would have just stripped winglets off...

flipped over.....:D

Sky News:

"Farmer witness account says he saw plane 'clip a tree'". :bored:

News conference
 

Schiphol airport press conference (live on Sky News UK) stating nine dead and approximately fifty injured. No information on the condition of the injured.

No indications of cause. Care of the casualties is the priority.

Images through twitter:
http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/ANP-9259371.jpg

http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/ANP-9259316.jpg

http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/ima...hschiphol2.jpg

rear galley
 

looks like the cabin crew had it bad in the back i see that the crew seats are missing from video on cnn rip if its true 9 people dead

A couple of observations...
 

The photos posted on page 4 of the thread are of very good quality and give away much detail....

1- The aircraft was in the landing configuration with full slat deployed.

2- The debris field is quite small, the Stbd. engine has come to rest only a few metres ahead of the fuselage suggesting very low forward speed at impact. This is supported by the (relatively little) rearward fuselage distortion in the radome and E+E bay area.

3- The heavy fuselage shear forward of the empennage suggests first point of impact was the tail. The level of vertical forces indicate improbable survival in the last few rows or rear galley.

4- The remainder of the fuselage aft of the forward W/B fairing has absorbed very significant vertical forces to the point where it has parted.

5- The forward section appears to have has suffered greater vertical impact than the mid section. This is witnessed by the hole punched through the roof section by one of the vertical (fwd) galley stanchions that can be seen poking through the roof. This might be due to the mid section experiencing vertical retardation as the main gear absorbed some of the vertical impact... the front section continued earthwards and just sheared off. Survivability therefore would better in the mid section.

6- The first stage fan blades of the engine in view have no radial distortion suggesting little or no rotation at the point of impact.

7- No fire does not mean no fuel

8- Eyewitness reports of the aircraft 'porpoising' on final approach are consistent with a deeply stalled aircraft.


.....I would be very interested to learn how much fuel remained onboard at the time of the accident.

Comment from news briefing suggest '...9 fatalities, 50 injured. No speculation as to cause, investigators onsite now....'

Terrorism has been ruled out.

Local farmer quoted that he thought the tail of the plane '...hit a tree on approach...' - seems likely seeing the location, but unlikely to have had an effect on the accident.

Could it be because they were in a plane crash, do you think? :ugh:

Press conference confirms 9 dead, 50+ wounded, of which 25+ severely. Time of crash nailed at 10.31, but not a whole lot more information. They are busy composing the passenger list. No speculations as to the reason of the crash.

Dutch news conference reporting 9 dead people and 50 wounded, among which 25 heavily. :(:(:(

(- I observe relatively few damage to the fan blades of the right engine visible in the high definition pictures of the crash site previously posted in another page -)

Good continuation,
vonbag

P.S. only now I read BackPacker reply, sorry for the echo.

> The first stage fan blades of the engine in view have no radial distortion suggesting little or no rotation at the point of impact.

Not sure how significant that is, given that the fan casing appears intact with no distortion that would have impinged on the blades even if the engine was still turning.

Starbear, sorry you are wrong the slides will deploy automatically regardless of height from the ground as long as they are armed ie that the girt bars are attached to the floor also the door power assist will also activate rapidly open the doors, again only if the doors are armed, I am of course assuming the B737 has door power assist as have never worked on them.

Seems that sone of the victims are still inside the wreckage. Activity seems to be concentrated round the cockpit.. Airport buses arrived at the scene and most of the ambulances are now leaving.

Operations resuming on two runways

How about false glide capture, low cloud base??? Not a lot of time to sort that out if your mind is set for a 'normal' landing as you come out the murk . . .

Sky news just quoted your points word for word.......
"Maglug A couple of observations... "

Hello Sky
 

Sky News UK is currently reading out PPrune posts for their "expert" to review!! Didn't catch if they quoted PPrune as the source; don't think they did.

The guy is pretty useless, of course, suggesting that the porpoising is due to the autopilot chasing the GA.

Sky anchor now saying we should "stay within the bounds of the known" after their experts have even been suggesting hijacking this morning!

Matkat
 

Actually Matkat, I am not. I will if required find you chapter and verse but for now I assure you that opening of the door (power assisted or not) merely allows the slide to be withdrawn from its bustle and fall outwards. This drop then causes a cable (lanyard) to pull a pin and activate the air/nitrogen cylinder to inflate, with assistance of aspirators, the slide itself. It is for this reason the worst thing one can do is to remove a set of steps or airbridge away from an inadvertently "deployed" slide.

The slide needs to drop for full activation.

Turkish press is reporting that Dutch TV is reporting port engine seperated in flight resulting in loss of control...

Hollanda TV'sinden þok iddia - Hürriyet

Any more on this?

Didn't catch if they quoted PPRuNe as the source; don't think they did.

They said the comments came from 'quite a reputable website'.

Cyclist who saw accident happen, now on BBC Radio 5...

He says...
Regardless of power levels, is still looking like this aircraft entered a fully stalled condition.

Despite the tragic loss of life and no doubt many spinal compressions, fractures and internal injuries, this Boeing 737 looks like having allowed a large proportion of passengers to survive what was undoubtedly a very high vertical descent rate.

Mmm, not corroborated by eyewitess report in post #133

and would be extremely unlikely?

Who is this Rosenschein fella that Sky have dug up? Does he know anything about aeroplanes ? He is free to quote me from Pprune but he might acknowledge the source of his 'wisdom'.

I wonder how much he gets paid by Sky News for spouting drivel ?

Looks like it stalled, pax report turbulence just prior to the crash, in the turn onto finals, maybe doing a visual? Not the first time such an accident has happened.
Pitched up then dropped like a stone?
Relatively flat impact?

The accident site is about 2 km from the threshold 18R. As near as I can make it on the approach charts, the aircraft should have been at a little more than 355 feet altitude over there. Threshold elevation is -13 feet, and most roads in this area are a few feet elevated above the fields level. Plausible.

No way. Not at Schiphol airport. Not when it's busy. Not considering the viz and cloudbase today. Not at 18R, particularly not considering all the noise restrictions. At Schiphol, vectors for the ILS are the norm with intercepts at 2000' (3000' at night even). At the place where the crash took place, he should be firmly established on the ILS. He could not and should not be turning at all over there, other than to maintain the localizer.

The only exception to this is light GA landing VFR at 04/22 which they clearly weren't.

Question:
A Saudi 747 roll's down from it's parked positiong to a dip...and the entire cockpit section crumbles...

The 777 Lands on rough terrain at London...hits the approach lights and stays intact...

Does Boeing have different teams who design each aircraft type...and possibly design the structural integrity differently...
I suspect those 3 sections are where the plane is joined together in the assembly process...

Is there some other way of designing the aircraft better?

I feel sad as soon as 1 person dies...

Rainbow stop being such a sick batard...so you don't care if people dies...I tell you what...stop even looking into this accident...You see people investigate accidents because people dieing is a bad thing...not for any other reason...peoples lives are the important thing!

No, it's more like an airline waiting for official notification from foreign aviation authorities and not jumping in with wild speculation taken from the press.

Has to be nonsense - there'd be a smoking crater somewhere and none has been mentioned. Possibly mistranslation of 'lost the port engine'?

from our planeplotter group we have the following data.

last report

1050 feet

heading 184 degrees

149 knots

4-5 km north of the airfield.

sorry just to qualify. data is from mode-s output.


Geoff

Dutch reporter on CNN reporting that passengers view was the plane 'ran out of kerosene'

Sky have suggested that the pilots may have been confused by an airport with six runways (as if).

I have occasionally been offered a visual switch from 18R to 18C, but I hardly think ATC would offer, nor any sane jet pilot accept it in this weather...

So our friend is a career co-pilot from 74's. All becomes clear.

Anyone has a URL with the ATC transmissions yet? The Dutch TV let us hear some extracts during their 13h news edition...

With a 700' cloudbase? And in a turn but less than 1nm from final? Unlikely.

Flat impact and reports of 'porpoising' do suggest loss of control. Is it still 'CFIT' if the aircraft was stalled, but still technically flyable? I guess not.

Bridge builder, I don't consider Rainboe's post abusive, and it is welcome that someone else is not prepared to tolerate some of the nonsense spouted by flight-simmers, non-aviation people and evanglicals.

Some people are now in little bits because something went wrong with the field which I work in every day. I want to discuss 'why', with people who might know what they are talking about. If anyone wants to start a huggy-fluffy RIP thread, then clear off and do so and leave the rest of us alone.

I quite hope they do not do down, as that usually means...zombies :eek:

Which is *exactly* on the ILS 18R. I just don't know if 149 knots is normal at this stage - I don't fly jets.

I heard the extracts too but they were from a ground frequency. Essentially ATC telling all aircraft to hold position and standby due to a major incident. Not surprising, considering that virtually all emergency services were heading for an off-airport location.

What you'll want is the tape from 118.275 (tower west).

Slides
 

The slides on most airliners need to drop a considerable distance before a lanyard is pulled and the they are inflated.

On the 737 this is no different. The slides simply didn't drop far enough.

aaaaaaaaa
:ugh:

get coffee...thats a normal Dutch thing..give people coffee..its just cultural...

Back Packer..sounds like a normal approach into SPL to me (13 years of flying into SPL)

http://archive-server.liveatc.net/eh...2009-0900Z.mp3

Last third of the taping 1951 is handed over to tower

@Magplug,

Are you sure about that? I have been based at Schiphol for over 10 years and have never ever had one of those!!!

They might offer you a switch from 18R to 18C, but it is NEVER a visual switch, and it NEVER happens less than 20nm from touchdown. They ask if you would like 18C instead of 18R, and if you say yes, they vector you for the 18C ILS.

You are in danger of being guilty of the very thing you accuse the Sky News Pilot of. :eek:

Slides and Fuel
 

To become preoccupied that the lack of Fire is an indication of Fuel stavation is surely a blind alley... I can think of any number of incidents with a fuel load that have not resulted in a fire - BY in Girona, Southwest in a Petrol Station somewhere in USA, TNT without LDG Gear to name but three off the top of my head. I'm not a fuel expert but I would have thought that in the case of Fuel Starvation without the much talked about fuel tank inertion system the risk of explosion is much higher as Fuel/Air Vapour mix is far more volatile than fuel in it's liquid form...

To clarify the escape slide deployment issue - on a B737NG aircraft the 4 Door Slides are all the same, they are stored on the door and held to the rest of the fuselage by a girt bar which is attached to the floor when the doors are placed in "automatic" - the action of opening the door in this state pulls the inflatable slide away from its storage container and pack board- if the aircraft were on its Gear away from obstructions the inflatable would unravel and the inflation bottle would be activated by the drop (think of a pin being removed from a hand granade) if this does not happen for whatever reason there is a red tag handle that can be pulled to activate the bottle. Aspirators etc then kick in to assist in the quick inflation of the inflatable.

In this particular case given the distance from ground to door sill I would have thought that fully inflated slides would have hampered evacuation - think of trying to run on a bouncy castle or bungy cord game...Perhaps it is evidence of quick, clear decisive action and professionalism by those crew able to function in the immediate aftermath of the incident...

On inspection of the R1 Door in the photos posted it is clear that the slide remains in it's bussel and the girt bar is intact and hanging from the door indicating a disarming before opening. I think the fact that the red strip is still over the door window indicates nothing - would you really remove it in the heat of an emergency evacuation?

I am not speculating here - just the opposite trying too stop such conversation.