SEATTLE — The Boeing Co. said two of its employees were among nine people who died when a Turkish Airlines jetliner crashed into a muddy field in the Netherlands.
The company said in a statement late today that the U.S. State Department also confirmed that a third Boeing employee is among the injured.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on their Web site today that three Boeing employees were among those killed. A fourth employee was critically injured, the P-I said.
Boeing previously said four of its employees were aboard the Boeing 737-800 that was carrying 135 people when it crashed Wednesday about two miles short of the runway at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
The Boeing statement said the status of the fourth employee has not been officially confirmed.
Boeing has identified the four employees as Ronald Richey, John Salman, Ricky Wilson and Michael Hemmer, all from the Seattle area. The statement does not specify which were killed or injured.
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AMSTERDAM — A Dutch mayor said today the nine people killed when a Turkish Airlines jet slammed into a field near Amsterdam’s main airport are five Turks and four Americans.
Haarlemmermeer Mayor Theo Weterings said the names of the victims will not be released until the bodies have been formally identified. It was not immediately clear how long that would take.
He also said investigators now say 135 passengers and crew were on the flight, not 134 as previously believed, which was one reason it had taken so long to account for the dead.
Flight TK1951 from Istanbul crashed Wednesday morning about one mile short of the runway at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, smashing into three pieces and spraying luggage and debris across a field.
At the crash site today, investigators took detailed photos of the wreckage, trying to piece together why the plane lost speed and crashed.
Earlier today, the head of the agency investigating the Turkish Airlines plane crash said that engine trouble may be a factor in the crash.
Pieter van Vollenhoven said in remarks cited by Dutch state television NOS that the plane had fallen almost directly from the sky, which pointed toward the plane’s motors having stalled.
He said a reason for that had not yet been established.
Spokeswoman Sandra Groenendal of the Dutch Safety Authority confirmed that NOS reported Vollenhoven’s remarks accurately.
Survivors said engine noise seemed to stop right before the crash, the plane shuddered and then simply fell out of the sky tail-first. Witnesses on the ground said the plane dropped from about 300 feet and crashed several hundred yards short of the runway’s threshold into a freshly ploughed field, killing nine crew and passengers of the 134 people on board.
The pilot’s curt yet calm voice on the radio frequency gave no indication that anything was wrong. “Turkish 1951 descending from level 7-0,” said one of the pilots on the Boeing 737-800 arriving from Istanbul to Amsterdam’s Shiphol Airport on Wednesday morning, referring to its altitude of 7,000 feet.
“Turkish 1951 hello. Descend to 4-0. Speed is OK for ILS 1-8 right,” the controller replied, clearing the airliner to an altitude of 4,000 feet, where it would intercept an electronic beam guiding the plane down to Runway 18 Right.
The controller then read out correct radio frequency for communicating with the airport’s tower after landing.
“OK, thanks sir,” the pilot replied.
Mayor Weterings told reporters that 121 people in all were treated for injuries and six remained in critical condition. Of those, 25 were considered seriously hurt.
The plane broke up into three pieces and sprayed luggage and debris across the field. Despite the catastrophic impact, the wreckage did not catch fire.
One survivor, Jihad Alariachi, said there was no warning from the cockpit to brace for landing before the ground loomed up.
“We braked really hard, but that’s normal in a landing. And then the nose went up. And then we bounced … with the nose aloft” before the final impact, she said.
At the crash site today, investigators took detailed photos of the wreckage, trying to piece together why the plane lost speed and plowed into the field.
The passengers and crew came from at least nine different countries, including seven Americans and three Britons. Four of the Americans were Boeing employees from the Seattle area.
Three of those killed were the Turkish pilots, Weterings said. The identities of the remaining six victims and of four critically injured passengers were still not known.
He said investigators could not yet reveal any details of their probe into the cause of the deadly crash.
Fred Sanders, spokesman for the Dutch Safety Authority, said the flight’s data recorders and voice tapes had been sent to Paris for analysis, a process that normally takes several days.
Investigators will interview surviving crew members, passengers and witnesses on the ground and explore a number of possible causes, including insufficient fuel, weather-related factors or bird strikes. Sanders said a preliminary result may be made public soon, although the full report will not be ready for months.
A team of Turkish experts flew to the Netherlands to help. Turkish Transport Minister Binali Yildirim also paid tribute to the pilot.
“I would like to commemorate the pilot, who at the cost of his own life, ensured that human casualties were low,” Yildirim said.
Families of Turkish victims arrived on a chartered flight from Istanbul late Wednesday.
A retired pilot who listened to a radio exchange between air traffic controllers and the aircraft shortly before the crash said he didn’t hear anything unusual.
“Everything appeared normal,” said Joe Mazzone, a former Delta Air Lines captain.
Just before the end of the recording — posted by the Web site LiveATC.net, which captures air traffic exchanges by monitoring scanners near airports — the last thing heard is the controllers giving the tower frequency to the pilots, said Mazzone, who lives in Auburn, Ala.
There was no way to tell from the Web recording if there was more communication between the aircraft and the officials at the airport or exactly how long the exchange came prior to the crash. Mazzone said the point where the transmission ended would likely have been several minutes before the plane would have normally touched down.
Weather at the airport at the time of the accident was cloudy with a slight drizzle.
Turkish Airlines chief Temel Kotil said the captain, Hasan Tahsin Arisan, was an experienced former air force pilot. Turkish officials said the plane was built in 2002 and last underwent thorough maintenance on Dec. 22.
It was the deadliest crash in the Netherlands since a vintage DC3 crashed in a shallow sea on Sept. 25, 1996, killing 32 people.
Turkish Airlines has had several serious crashes since 1974, when 360 people died in the crash of a DC-10 near Paris after a cargo door came off. More recently, in 2003, 75 died when an RJ-100 missed the runway in heavy fog in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.
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