News Turkish airlines plane crashes in Amsterdam

[simonpro]

Several independant sources have said that an engine (probably the port one) parted the wing in flight, which may have led to the stall.
Then again, it's probably based on eyewitness accounts, so not sure how reliable that is.

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

In this video you can see a part of the trails on the ground:

 

[lockingtoggle]

, etc) does also not support your claims.

To which claims do you refer? To the one with the "may explain"?

That may explain the absence of fire. Fuel dump.

 

[Urwumpe]

To which claims do you refer? To the one with the "may explain"?

Yeah exactly. It makes no sense to have the fuel dump hypothesis on a 737.

 

[lockingtoggle]

Oh, i thought it was a A380

 

[cjp]

Most airplanes only take only the amount of fuel with them that is needed for the planned flight (plus a bit more for unexpected wind changes etc.). Usually, the tanks are mostly empty at the landing in any case.

On the news I've seen images that looked a bit like the engines were separated from the wings. They were maybe about 50 m away from the rest of the airplane.

Edit: here you can see the one closest to the airplane:

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

News from latest press conference:

3 crewmembers are still aboard (in cockpit), they did not survive. 6 other passengers where killed, totalling 9.
All passengers now left the plane, except the 3 crewmembers mentioned.

4 passengers are in critical state in hospital.

-----Post Added-----

'Black box' (Flight data recorder & Cockpit voice recorder) has been found.

 

[Moonwalker]

Most airplanes only take only the amount of fuel with them that is needed for the planned flight (plus a bit more for unexpected wind changes etc.). Usually, the tanks are mostly empty at the landing in any case.

Depends on how you define 'mostly empty'.

The minimum fuel quantity for IFR flights at reaching the destination is a reserve for 45 minutes cruise + fuel to reach an alternate airport (in case the weather is going to be bad, but most flights today carry alternate fuel anyway) + minimum fuel that has to remain within the tanks because of design reasons (tanks are never fully empty unless there is a general airplane check). So a Boeing 727 for example still has at least about 7300 pounds of fuel in its tanks at landing (without alternate fuel!), which is almost 15% of the total fuel quantity.

This has nothing to do with the landing fuel, but beside all that fuel loaded before flight, taxi fuel also is an extra fuel load, which even allows to exceed the maximum take off weight during taxi out.

For the fuel dumping speculations: the whole Boeing 737 family has no fuel dumping capability. Fuel dumping only is used on heavy airplanes because of their long landing distances.

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

remember the plane went from Istanbul to Amsterdam. This is pretty much at the maximum of range of this kind of plane.

Distance Istanbul airport <-> Amsterdam/Schiphol/crashsite: 2215 km
Maximum range Boeing 737-800: 5665 km
[specifications source]

 

[Moonwalker]

Distance Istanbul airport <-> Amsterdam/Schiphol/crashsite: 2215 km
Maximum range Boeing 737-800: 5665 km
[specifications source]

Yes. People often tend to think that the Boeing 737 is just a small short range jet, which is no longer true for many years (only the first one, the 737-100 was). The 300s to 800s are nice medium range jets. Today the 800 regularly flies from Germany to the Canary Islands for example (about 3700 km), while in the 1980's and early 1990's this was basically done with the big trijets (DC-10, MD11 and L1011) and the A330 and Boeing 757 later as well. Today it is basically done with the small A320 and 737 next generation family.

The 737-900 business jet variant even has a range of more than 8000 km by the way. Boeing rocks.

 

[Robert van der Veeke]

The plane crashed tail first, the tailwings (while its rudder is more or less still attached to the plane) are lying more than a plane length behind the plane while its engine (or at least one of them) is lying in front of the plane.

This is consistent with what people on the ground saw, moments before the plane basically fell out of the sky it tilted is nose unusally high and flew very slowly.

No fire allowed a lot people to get out of the plane alive.

http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/ANP-9259316.jpg
Look at the engine in the foreground.

http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/crashschiphol2.jpg
Looks like it smacked right into the ground without almost no forward speed

http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/ANP-9259371.jpg
Rudder at almost 180 degrees with the rest of the plane.

In this video you can see a part of the trails on the ground:

And at the start of that trail you see the tailwings

 

[Pilot7893]

Two possible causes are now considered:

• Engine power loss caused by either lack of fuel or malfunction in fuel system.
• Double bird strike like on recent Hudson crash, damaging both engines.

You know, I read that a dual engine failure is one of the rarest occurences in an airplane. We've had 2 in a row in the past 2 months. Maybe an anti-plane terrorist group is forming.

 

[simonpro]

Apparently velocity at 200ft was around 80kts.

That's a tad slow.

 

[Pilot7893]

Apparently velocity at 200ft was around 80kts.

That's a tad slow.

The hell it is.

 

[Andy44]

The hell it isn't. Low airspeed means a stall, which means an airplane departing from controlled flight and falling steeply until the nose comes down and airspeed increases again. Which cannot happen if you are too low, resulting in a cornfield landing like this one.

 

[tl8]

Apparently velocity at 200ft was around 80kts.

That's a tad slow.

Quoting FSX, the approximate approach speed of a 737-800 is about 140kts

I see a small problem

 

[Urwumpe]

Quoting FSX, the approximate approach speed of a 737-800 is about 140kts

Just a tiny bit too slow... only 60 knots, come on!



Could it be alternatively caused by a faulty pitot tube?

 

[Cairan]

I'll go with the fuel exhaustion hypothesis...

Almost intact fan blades = no low pressure engine spool rotation on impact
No fire + compromised tank integrity = no fuel in tanks
No fuel in tanks + not turning engines = fuel exhaustion
Fuel exhaustion + too long a glide = trying to stretch the glide by raising the nose + high AOA
Stretching the glide + high angle of attack = stall

However what's troubling me is the lack of a PAN PAN! PAN PAN! PAN PAN! xxx Declaring minimum fuel... followed by a MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY! when one of the engines cuts out due to fuel starvation.

If indeed it is fuel exhaustion, with a lack of warning to/from the crew by the inboard instruments of the pending running-on-empty, I'd say it might be a "Gimli Glider, Amsterdam edition".

 

[Hielor]

If indeed it is fuel exhaustion, with a lack of warning to/from the crew by the inboard instruments of the pending running-on-empty, I'd say it might be a "Gimli Glider, Amsterdam edition".

With a significantly less impressive ending.

 

[Cairan]

With a significantly less impressive ending.

Yeah, indeed. However, it might be possible there was a problem with the fuel gauges (just like the gimli glider) along with higher fuel consumption from, say , stronger headwinds, or a foul up with fueling back in turkey...

However, the 777 BA flight back at Heathrow comes back to mind... Maybe the fuel was contaminated back in Turkey and it sloshed and clogued the fuel lines, just like the BA flight.

All in all, we'll know rather soon what were the actual conditions thanks to the black boxes...