Turkish Airlines has worst accident record in Europe

After its plane carrying 135 people crashes in Amsterdam, breaking into three parts and killing nine, a paper reports...

Turkish Airlines has worst accident record in Europe

After its plane carrying 135 people crashes in Amsterdam, breaking into three parts and killing nine, a paper reports...

SCARY: Rescue workers near the wreckage of a Turkish Airlines plane in Amsterdam yesterday. The Boeing 737-800 broke into three pieces when it crashed into a field near Schiphol airport. pic/ap

Terry Tozer wrote in The Independent, "Airsafe.com lists fatal accidents by million flights since 1970 and, while many have none and other well-known names register,u00a0 Turkish hits 3.58 with nine crashes."

He added, "Yesterday's fatal incident was the second involving Turkish Airlines this decade u2013 the first, in Turkey in 2003, killed 75 when a plane crashed nearly a kilometre short of the runway. The airline suffered a number of serious crashes during the 1970s, with 608 passengers killed in roughly two years."

What happened

The Boeing 737-800 crashed into a field near Schiphol airport in Amsterdam seconds before it was due to land from Istanbul. It broke into three sections in the soft earth. There was no explosion or fire and dozens of passengers scrambled unhurt from the wreckage.

Nine people mostly in the tail section and cockpit were killed and 49 were injured, 25 seriously.

There were reports in the Dutch media that flight TK 1951, carrying 127 passengers and seven crew, had run out of fuel and lost power just before it reached the runway of Europe's fifth busiest airport.

Investigators, who have recovered the flight data and voice recorders, refused to comment on the cause last night.

Twitter first to publish crash pictures, again

The social networking site Twitter again stole a march on traditional media when it was the first outlet to publish dramatic pictures of the crash.

"This is a story that broke on Twitter first and continued to unfold from there. Eyewitnesses were posting comments about the shock of seeing the plane 'dive' and amazement of passengers walking out of the wreckage," said a reporter.

An image of the fractured plane posted on Twitter.com was the first worldwide view of the crash. It was snapped by an eyewitness driving on the nearby highway.
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Twitter first rose to prominence during the Mumbai terror attacks, when people sent messages to their sites from the hotels under attack. They followed it up with constant updates during the Hudson plane landing.

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