Aircraft safety once again finds itself in firm focus after a Turkish Airlines passenger plane in the process of completing its journey from Istanbul to Amsterdam failed to reach its destination and slammed into the ground short of Amsterdam’s Schipol International airport early on Wednesday morning.
Passengers reportedly clambered out through the broken fuselage sections. Image: markvdrheijden/Flickr.
According to initial reports, nine of the 127 passengers and seven crew members aboard the Boeing 737-800 aircraft lost their lives after the plane plunged into a field approximately five kilometres short of the airport’s perimeter, breaking into three pieces as a result.
While airline spokesman and Turkish Transportation Minister Binali Yildirim initially said there was no loss of life during the accident, an airline official speaking with CNN-Turk soon confirmed that fatalities were indeed involved.
At least 50-60 passengers are said to have sustained injuries during the crash, although it is believed that a further 50 were able to walk away from their ordeal completely unscathed.
The cause of the crash is currently unknown, although one survivor has been quoted as describing a descent that felt as though the plane was experiencing turbulence before the pilot suddenly gunned the engines and the plane dropped, slamming nose-up into a farmer’s field.
Another survivor, a bank manager, told Turkish station NTV that the flight crew made no emergency announcements ahead of the crash, with passengers routinely told to fasten their seatbelts and prepare for landing.
While the recent tragic plane crash in the suburbs of Buffalo reiterated that bold emergency landings on the Hudson River are near miraculous exceptions to the usual outcome of midair failings, survivors of the Turkish Airlines crash have today joined the ranks of the lucky after escaping with their lives.
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