Airplane crash in Amsterdam

On the 25th of February, 2009, the Turkish Airlines Flight 1951 left Istanbul, Turkey, heading towards Amsterdam, the Netherlands, but instead of landing at Schiphol Airport, it crashed in the middle of a field, about 1.5 kilometers (a mile) before the runway. Nine people were killed, including the three pilots and one member of the cabin crew, and 86 passengers were injured.

Picture source from Wikipedia.

Crash Investigation

The plane's flight data have been recovered and sent to Paris to be analyzed by experts. Because there was no fire, it was speculated that the plane had some sort of fuel problem, but this was not the case.

Investigators revealed that a faulty altimeter played a big part in the crash. This caused an autopilot to drastically slow down the plane. The plane had been at 1950 foot when its left altimeter, the faulty one, registered an altitude of eight foot below sea level, according to Mr. Pieter van Vollenhoven.

"From the black box it appears that then the pilots immediately gave gas, full gas, however it was too late to recover," Mr. van Vollenhoven said.

Other accidents with Turkish Airlines

Since 1970 there have been nine other fatal incidents with the Turkish Airlines. On the third of March, 1974, Flight 981 crashed in France, and due to explosive decompression, killing all 346 people aboard. Before the Tenerife Airport disaster, it was the deadliest aircraft tragedy in history.

The accident prior to this one, on the 8th of January, 2003, was Flight 634, heading towards Diyarbakir, a city in south-eastern Turkey. The airplane crashed 900 meters before the runway. There were 75 passengers and five crew members on the plane. Only six survived the crash with serious injuries, but one of them, an infant, died the next morning.