I think:

149 knots sounds about right.

Depending on the weight the approach speeds at 30-40 flap are in the region of 135-150

N

Latest reports mention 9 death. Seems that both pilots are also killed and still in the cockpit...

50 People injured of which 25 seriously.

Eyewitnesses report the plane stalling several times before coming down.

Lack of fuel seem to be a serious possibility.

What would be the point of being here this early, if not for the speculation and perspective?

On the initial reports of no deaths from the Turkish airline. Some cultures are accepting of lying to spare others suffering. In Japan for instance, there is a tendency to withhold an incurable diagnosis to spare the patient and family. Is there a similar cultural feature in Turkey, where until it is known who has died and who has lived, it is thought more compassionate to mislead all to think that everyone has survived. Those who are lucky enough to have loved ones among the survivors would have been spared needless worry. Those who were given false hope, were eventually going to be miserable anyway, why make them miserable sooner than necessary. I don't accept the reasoning myself, but wonder if any here has insight into the Turkish culture.

@Ray D'Vecta
Perhaps your are just unlucky! Visual or Radar it does not seem to matter, you only get it if you are painted the right shade of blue :=

Here is a link to the Turkish newspaper in English.
Nine dead after Turkish Airlines plane crash-lands in Amsterdam

Read a lot of absolute nonsense here, as usual... MS Flight sim pilots please refrain from contributing.

My very limited observations tell me the following:

1) Weather conditions and Airfield point to an ILS RWY 18R approach.
2) Plane hit the ground where its normal height should be around 350'
3) Aircraft position/condition from the pictures SEEM to point to a low-speed impact, high pitch-up condition. This COULD be a result of a wing-stall at low altitude
4) It SEEMS that no Urgency/Emergency call was made, which makes a fuel starvation scenario as suggested unlikely.
5) 3 persons in the cockpit can mean the following: a) Training flight new First Officer b)Training flight new Captain (upgrade or on-type) c) Line-check
d) Cabin-crew on the jumpseat. options a,b,c leads to more experience on the flight-deck than usual, option d might point to a possible distracting factor.


Let us focus on the facts and act like professional officers please, we are also being watched by the media on this site and can do without wannabe's pretending to be flightcrew.

Despegue

Additional to post #133 eyewitness report

also have this data, but cannot guarantee the heading is correct.

1650 feet

heading 264 degrees??????

185 knots

5km ne of field.

is this turning finals or duff data???

Geoff

EHAM ATC recording- post accident
 

Some EHAM ATC recording available here - post accident...

LiveLeak.com - Turkish Airlines Crash in Amsterdam

turbulence or pilot induced oscillation?
 

Looking at the TAF, METAR, and form 415 it is unlikely that the flight encountered much turbulence, certainly not enough to cause a serious accident. To passengers turbulence and pilot-induced-oscillations would feel pretty much the same. It's also possible that they felt a stall buffet and thought it was turbulence as they certainly feel similar.

If this was a stall-spin accident I would expect very few survivors as it would have likely dropped a wing so it looks like the aircraft was still under positive control although with a high sink-rate.

Given the conditions and the lack of a declared emergency it seems likely that the loss of power (if there was one) would have been in cloud in full landing configuration with the autopilot tracking the ILS. The aircraft would have lost some hydraulic power and would have turned into quite a handful, especially if it was out of trim when autopilot was lost. They would have popped out of cloud and had a very short time to arrest their rate of descent and set up for a forced landing.

That's not a situation I ever want to be in!

Been listening to BBC Radio 5 ever since this happened... rated A1 in level headedness!

Just reporting the facts as they seem to be, and then the eyewitness I've reported who seems to be a very sensible young man, trying to say clearly what he saw...

he even said to start with it hadn't occurred to him that the engines were quiet, because of all the other aircraft in the vicinity and he took it for granted it was making the normal noise... It struck him a short while later the one nearest that he watched (apparently) rear up and then drop wasn't itself making (much) noise.

He was a cyclist on his way to work, alomg that A9 I believe, so he'd be used to watching them...

Passengers reported that the whole flight was turbulence-free until seconds before the crash the plane started to shake vehemently. As for Rainboe's usual foaming rage explosions, in this case I report what people are saying they've seen actually happening. I've never claimed any experience which IMO only counts when you were on that plane cq. saw the crash happen. So, what do YOU know?

The altitude of this spotter system comes from the transponder and is based on 1013. There is high pressure over EHAM, this explains the value.

Turkish Culture
 

Africangenesis;

Unfortunately you are right. This is typical to Mediterranean / East European / Middle Eastern culture.

Say for example (God forbid) a relative of yours have died on the street, in a traffic accident. Police takes him/her to the hospital and calls you, saying a relative of yours has a health problem (Injured, etc...) although they positively know that he/she has died at the very instant that the accident has happened.

Unfortunate, but thruth...

I have been watching the news since midday (10.00am GMT).What seems to be a miracle was that there was no fire. A few commentators have suggested that had the 737 burned, things would have been completely different. Also, the newly ploughed field in which it came down was probably soggy which may have reduced the impact .

Regarding Engines
 

From photos I noticed the right engine is in the field meters ahead of the aircraft, with the right wing laying flat on the ground. From photos it appears the left wing is off the ground, but I can't tell if it's being lifted by the landing gear or the left engine.

I'm just wondering where the left engine is.

I think it was double engine flame out...

It is actually pretty hard to stall a 737. Was given stall recovery scenarios in my last sim, and by-golly do you have to try pretty hard to stall the aircraft. The control forces req are strong to bleed off the speed (and to maintain the G/S) and the nose becomes extremely heavy, plus the stick shaker and the buffet get your attention. Granted it was only the sim, but there's no doubt about the signals long before the stall.

The easiest time to stall is when you go-around, since the pitch-up is pronounced - doubly more so if you press TOGA twice, and you spend most of the time pushing the control column forward to maintain speed. If you get this wrong (i.e. no forward control input) then you can easily stall the aircraft. In addition, if you only have one auto-pilot in, then on pressing TOGA, it will disconnect and you're on your own. It can catch you out, as in the case of the Thomson in Bournemouth.

AMS controllers are pretty much on the money too, and despite some reasonably fast approaches in their traffic pattern, I've always felt pretty comfortable. No visual approaches, or circling to land - even on a good day!

But, if the A/T is disconnected, and in ARM, then 5 kts below the MCP speed, A/T will re-engage anyway, so unlikely to stall that way. Of course, complete A/T disconnect will give you no protection.

Both pilots killed
 

Dutch news confirms both pilots did not survive the crash.
Special teams try to free them from cockpit.

CS

For those not familiar with the B737:
On a Dual-Autopilot approach, the aircraft back-trims at around 400'. In case of a subsequent manual GA (normally the autopilot handles the GA) for whatever reason, a downward force is needed on the joke to avoid over-rotation...this can surprise sometimes new left-seaters during their sim-training.

Does anyone know the distance/time between the THY and the preceding landing aircraft, previous post say a B752?

Were LVP's in progress?

@Despegue
I'm not pushing fuel exhaustion as a pet theory but your statement is fundamentally flawed. In another culture, a pilot or crew that has screwed up with their arrival fuel could well be in a mindset to completely ignore the fact that have gone below minimum reserve (1100kg or whatever) because the loss of face is not acceptable.

Where this has happened elsewhere it usually comes to light that the culprit is a serial transgressor. Thankfully most of us would swallow our pride, stuff out a Mayday call and go straight to the front of the queue. This bloke may well have been stooging around the AMS pattern at 2000' for ages, waiting his turn, burning fuel like there's no tomorrow.

As I said, not a pet theory but the CVR will tell all quite soon I think.

no sponsor -
Not hard at all with ice on the tail. Don't know what model you're talking about. Only airplane I had a hard time stalling was the 1049 Connie.

Except for the probable position that Bye offered, the altitude, speed and heading would be consistent with a vector that would line up the aircraft to intercept the ILS. Schiphol vectors at 2000' QNH. And Bye has indicated that this was not the last mode-S recording.

False indication... probably not. Rubbish... probably not. Just irrelevant.

On the other hand, it confirms that there was probably nothing wrong with the aircrafts approach path until very late on final approach. Even the last mode-S recording seems completely normal.

On a related note - we know from these mode-s returns that the aircraft did 149 knots at 1050 feet (actually FL10.5, so 1500 feet on the QNH). Would it even be possible to bleed off so much speed in such a short period of time, so that the aircraft would be at stall speed 1000 feet lower, while maintaining the GS?

The reason no data down to the deck is available, with mode-S is selective interrogation. Such a transponder only transponds when prompted, either by radar or TCAS. But there's no deliberate delay built into mode-S or the scanners that receive them.

There was nothing wrong with your posts Geoff. I have no idea how accurate your Mode S data is, but giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that it is genuine data then I for one found it perfectly reasonable information for you to post - unlike almost every other post here.

AS a 737 Pilot:
 

I don't know why this plane crashed.

But I would like all of those who might have better views...

what position do the flaps appear in? here in the USA, there has been only brief mention of this tragedy...instead we are getting obama's speech analyzed

TO CNN, please fire( to british people this means SACK) your weather reporter who insists that jet engines have carbuerators, please rehire your award winning aviation/space reporter who at least has a private pilot lic.

I think it is interesting that the plane seems to have been following a 757, but am not convinced this means anything. Exact distances in trail must be known before any speculation on wake turbulence...also position on GS (high or low).

I agree with the poster that the plane trims nose up during a coupled approach.

I agree that when you add power in a 737 the nose goes up. But if you have seen it once, you know.

No mayday, weather not too bad, plane fairly new, airline that hasn't had a huge amount of recent crashes. Something happened quickly...man, machine...we don't know yet.

Pilots have suffered heart attacks at the controls, but that is why we have copilots.

So, let's calm down and wait for the answers. Modern recorders, pilots survived? we should know within 48 hours a clue at least.

Both pilots killed
 

Dutch news confirms both pilots did not survive the crash.

Beide piloten komen om - Binnenland - Telegraaf.nl [24 uur actueel, ook mobiel] [binnenland]

CS

Worth pointing out that ADS-B equipped aircraft transmit extended Mode-S squitters that are not contingent on Mode-S interrogation, so you can easily get position and other data broadcast at more than once per second rates.

according to the Turkish press, the plane was loaded with 9,600 litres of fuel in Istanbul before taking off

Some Hi res photos, that take you 360 degrees around crash site.

http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/ANP-9259474.jpg

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

The next two have been posted before on page 4.

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

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

As previously stated they are grim.

Yes, I've pointed this out to them twice now with no change. They were also referring to 36R at one point :ugh:

U.s.a N T S B Team To Amsterdam To Assist Dutch Safety Board
 

************************************************************
NTSB ADVISORY
************************************************************

National Transportation Safety Board
Washington, DC 20594


February 25, 2009
************************************************************
NTSB SENDS TEAM TO AMSTERDAM TO ASSIST WITH 737 AIRCRAFT
ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION

************************************************************

The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a team
of investigators to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to assist in
the investigation of a B-737-800 (T-CJGE) Turkish Airlines
flight 1951 that crashed short of the runway on approach.
Multiple fatalities and injuries have been reported.

NTSB Acting Chairman Mark V. Rosenker has designated senior
air safety investigator Joe Sedor as the U.S. Accredited
Representative. He will be joined by three other NTSB
investigators. The U.S. team will also include technical
advisors from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),
Boeing and General Electric.

Information on the progress of the investigation will be
released by the Dutch Safety Board. The agency's phone
number in the Netherlands is (31)70 333 7000, the agency’s
website is www.safetyboard.nl and the email address is
[email protected].

Media contact: Keith Holloway 202-314-6100
[email protected]


************************************************************

OK, some facts:

1. The weather at the time over that part of NW Europe was benign under high pressure with light SW'erly winds

2. The temperature at the time of the crash was +5deg C, the clouds were stratiform

=> windshear is extremely unlikely in these conditions
=> engine icing is possible in these conditions (although a few hours earlier my 747-400 auto eng antice system was not activated when flying into LHR in the same basic air mass). The cloud tops were relatively low at below 5000ft (my judgement), and as such exposure to engine icing conditions would have been quite limited in duration and in no way severe with the heating of the air due to the airspeed.

3. The cloudbase of 600-700ft and visibility of 3+km should cause no professional pilot any cause for the slightest concern.

4. B737's can not dump fuel

5. Jet A1 fuel is quite hard to ignite, and much harder than petrol etc

=> lack of a fire in no way indicates no fuel on board.

6. Eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable and are best ignored.

Nonetheless, the aircraft crashed short of the runway. The facts as determined by the accident investigation and the analysis of the black box flight recorders and cockpit voice recorder will give initial indications within the next few days.

Some larger photos here,

http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/photo/Turkish-Airlines/Boeing-737-8F2/1489066/L/

http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/photo/Turkish-Airlines/Boeing-737-8F2/1489066/L/


In the first picture, is that still one of the flight crew in the FD? Very hard to see.

Also look at the seats coming out of the crack.

Dont know if any of you guys can gain anything from these reports on the BBC from passengers and people on the ground

Page last updated at 15:11 GMT, Wednesday, 25 February 2009


Turkish plane crash: witnesses
Passengers and eyewitnesses have been describing what they saw when a Turkish Airlines plane crashed on landing at Amsterdam's Schiphol international airport.


Kerem Uzel, passenger
"We were at an altitude of 600m (2,000 feet) when we heard the announcement that we were landing.

"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."


Huseyin Sumer, passenger
"We were about to land, we could not understand what was happening. Some passengers screamed in panic but it happened so fast."


Unidentified passenger
"The first thing I did was take the children who were walking around there in the plane. That's the first thing you're thinking about. We immediately brought the children outside the plane."

Tuncer Mutluhan, passenger
"While we were making a normal landing it felt like we fell into a void, the plane lost control, suddenly plunged and crashed.

"It all happened in three or five seconds. There was panic after that."


Thomas Freidhoff, eyewitness
"[The plane] completely lost propulsion or couldn't glide anymore, and you clearly saw it come down several tens of metres and come to a quite sudden stop.

"The plane was nose up and the tail section was at a 45-degree angle. Seconds after the crash people started exiting through the tail section - 15-20 people, all of them, of course, frightened.

"Minutes after that they were climbing back in to get more passengers, who were slightly injured."


Jonathan Nip, local resident
"The whole of the aeroplane, without any wings or front or rear end, is lying in the field and there are about 50 ambulances, a lot of firetrucks, a couple of helicopters, emergency helicopters, a lot of police, a lot of sirens.

"It wasn't really a big crash, or a loud noise because the plane isn't that far from the runway so I think it wasn't going that fast or it wasn't that high to really make a big impact."


Nikolai van der Smagt, local worker
"I saw the plane lying there in three pieces.

"The first people were just getting off the plane and they looked confused. There was a lot a dust, but no fire."


Relative at Schiphol airport
"l managed to speak to my children and my family who were in the plane. They said there was panic on board, incredible, people were shouting: 'Get us out of here! Get us out of here!'"


Unidentified local resident
"We were inside in the house and we heard a smack, and we thought it was on the freeway.

So we got a cell phone and called, and somebody said: 'There is an aeroplane in your land.'"

I just listened to a survivor being interviewed and he said he could smell kerosene after the crash.

That would suggest that fuel exhaustion is not a factor.

Site of crash

http://www.volkskrant.nl/multimedia/...50_144662a.jpg

no fire
 

No fire doesn't necessarily indicate no fuel - it is fuel vapour that catches fire and empty tanks can still contain vapour.

It is, however, very odd albeit miraculous that the aircraft lost an engine on impact and broke into 3 pieces and there was no fire at all. If it was wind shear on approach then it was thanks to excellent airmanship that only 9 souls were lost. The TAF indicated a tempo change in visibility and wx changes to -dzra which might indicate a pressure or wind change. Only conjecture - need more facts.

Of course he could smell kerosene!!!! All aircraft tanks will have a residual amount of fuel left in them...even when the booster pumps can't scavenge anymore, even a tank that has been competely drained and ventilated for 24hrs still stinks of the stuff!

Oh why didn't I listen to my mother and become a doctor?

If they were running low on fuel, they would hardly fly all around Holland to land on 18R, a southerly runway. Unless the crew were unaware...but that is too much speculation. So can we freeze the no fire-no fuel discusion?