El Al Flight 1862
Encyclopedia
On 4 October 1992, El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747
cargo plane of the Israel
i airline El Al
, crashed into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer
(colloquially "Bijlmer") neighbourhood (part of Amsterdam Zuidoost
) of Amsterdam
, the Netherlands. For the location in the Bijlmermeer, the crash is known in Dutch
as the "Bijlmerramp" ("Bijlmer disaster"). A total of 43 people were killed, consisting of the plane's crew of three and a non-revenue passenger in a jump seat
, plus 39 people on the ground. Many more were injured.
On 4 October 1992, the aircraft, a Boeing 747-258F
, registration 4X-AXG, was traveling from John F. Kennedy International Airport
to Ben Gurion International Airport
and made a stopover at Schiphol
. During the flight from New York to Schiphol, three issues were noted: fluctuations in the autopilot
speed regulation, problems with the shortwave radio, and fluctuations in the voltage of engine number
three.
The jet landed at Schiphol at 2:31 pm local time. New cargo was loaded into the plane; the cargo had been approved by customs authorities, but as was realized later, had not been physically inspected. The aircraft was refueled and the observed issues were repaired, at least provisionally. Captain Yitzhak Fuchs, First Officer Arnon Ohad, and Flight Engineer
Gedalya Sofer crewed the aircraft. Anat Solomon, the only passenger on board, was traveling to Tel Aviv to marry an El Al employee. Yitzhak Fuchs was an experienced aviator, having previously flown as a fighter-bomber pilot, flying the De Havilland Mosquito
in the late 1950s Israeli Air Force.
/DME
navigation station. Soon after the turn, at 6:27 pm, above the Gooimeer
, a lake near Amsterdam, a sharp bang was heard while the aircraft was climbing through 6500 feet. Engine number three separated from the right wing of the aircraft, damaged the wing flaps, and struck engine number four, which then also separated from the wing. The two engines fell away from the plane. They attracted the attention of some pleasure boaters who had been startled by the loud noise. The boaters notified the Netherlands Coastguard
of two objects they had seen falling from the sky. Captain Fuchs made a mayday
call to air traffic control
(ATC) and indicated that he wanted to return to Schiphol. At 6:28:45 pm, the captain reported: "El Al 1862, lost number three and number four engine, number three and number four engine."
ATC did not yet grasp the severity of the situation. In aviation, the word lost as Captain Fuchs used it generally means a loss of engine capacity. ATC therefore believed that two engines had merely stopped functioning, and did not know that they had broken off the wing. It is probable that the crew, too, did not know that the engines had fallen off the aircraft. The outboard engine on the wing of a 747 is visible from the cockpit only with some difficulty, and the inboard engine on the wing is not visible at all. Given the choices that the captain and crew made following the loss of engine power, the Dutch parliamentary inquiry commission that later studied the crash assumed that the crew did not know that both engines had broken away from the right wing.
The plane was too high and close in to land when it circled back to the airport. The captain was forced to continue circling Amsterdam until he could reduce his altitude to that required for a final approach to landing. During the second circle, the captain instructed the first officer to extend the wing flaps. The inboard trailing edge flaps extended, since they were powered by the number one hydraulic system, which was still functioning, but the outboard trailing edge flaps did not extend, because they were powered by the number four hydraulic system, which failed when the number four engine was torn from the right wing. That partial flap condition meant that the plane would have a higher pitch attitude than normal, as the plane slowed down. The leading edge flaps (powered by the pneumatic system) extended on the left wing, but not on the right wing, because of the damage inflicted on that wing when the right engines were torn off. That differential configuration caused the left wing to generate significantly more lift
than the damaged right wing, especially when the pitch attitude increased as the airspeed decreased. The increased lift on the left side increased the tendency to roll further to the right, both because the right outboard aileron was inoperative and because the captain elected to increase the thrust on the left engines in an attempt to reduce his very high sink rate. As the aircraft slowed, the ability of the remaining controls to counteract the right roll diminished. The captain finally lost all ability to prevent the plane from rolling to the right. The roll reached 90 degrees just before the impact with the apartment houses.
At 6:35:25 pm, the first officer radioed to ATC: "Going down, 1862, going down, going down, copied, going down." In the background, the captain was heard instructing the first officer in Hebrew to raise the flaps and lower the landing gear.
neighborhood, at the corner of a building where the Groeneveen complex met the Klein-Kruitberg complex. The building exploded into flames and partially collapsed inward, destroying dozens of apartments. The cockpit came to rest east of the flats, between the building and the viaduct of Amsterdam Metro Line 53.
During the last moments of the flight, the arrival traffic controllers made several desperate attempts to contact the aircraft. The Schiphol arrival controllers work from a closed building at Schiphol-East, not from the control tower. At 6:35:45 pm, however, the control tower reported to the arrival controllers: "Het is gebeurd" (lit., "It has happened", but often meaning "It is over"). At that moment a large cloud of smoke was visible above Amsterdam from the control tower. El Al Flight 1862 disappeared from arrival control radar. The arrival controllers reported that the aircraft had last been located 1 mile west of Weesp
and emergency personnel were sent immediately.
At the time of the crash, two police officers were in the Bijlmermeer
checking on a burglary report. They saw the aircraft plummet and immediately sounded an alarm. The first fire trucks and rescue services arrived within a few minutes of the crash. Nearby hospitals were advised to prepare for hundreds of casualties. The flats were partly inhabited by undocumented illegal immigrants, and the death toll
would be difficult to estimate in the hours after the crash.
In the days immediately following the disaster, the bodies of the victims and the remains of the plane were recovered from the crash site. The remains of the plane were transported to Schiphol for analysis. The parts were not used by investigators to reconstruct the aircraft.
The aircraft's flight data recorder
was recovered from the crash site, with its data intact. The cockpit voice recorder
, however, had been destroyed, although El Al employees stated that it had been installed in the aircraft.
, the fuse pins holding the engine nacelle to the wing are designed to fracture cleanly, allowing the engine to fall away from the aircraft without damaging the wing or wing fuel tank. Airliners are generally designed to remain airworthy in the event of an engine failure, so that the plane can be landed safely. Damage to a wing or wing fuel tank can have disastrous consequences. The Netherlands Aviation Safety Board found, however, that the fuse pins had not failed properly, but instead had suffered metal fatigue
prior to overload failure. The Safety Board pieced together a probable sequence of events for the loss of engine 3:
This sequence of step-by-step failures caused the engine and pylon to break free, knocking outboard engine 4 and its pylon off the wing as well and inflicting serious damage on the leading edge of the right wing, including the control surfaces (flaps) that Captain Fuchs later tried to extend in flight.
Research indicated that the plane had only managed to maintain level flight at first due to its high air speed (280 knots). The damage to the right wing, resulting in reduced lift, had made it much more difficult to keep the plane level. At 280 knots (548.8 km/h), there was nevertheless sufficient lift on the right wing to keep the plane aloft. Once the plane had to reduce speed for landing, however, it was doomed; there was too little lift on the right wing to enable stable flight, and the plane banked sharply to the right without any chance of recovery.
The official probable causes were determined to be:
Rumors have persisted that the actual ground victim count must have been higher than 39, but the victims' bodies were completely incinerated. The apartment complexes where the El Al flight crashed contained many undocumented residents, illegal immigrants to the Netherlands. The Dutch parliamentary inquiry commission concluded during the investigation that the number of found bodies was more or less commensurate with the final number of missing persons, and that therefore there were no reasons to suspect that the actual ground death toll was higher than 39.
, and suffered from symptoms similar to the Gulf War Syndrome
or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
-like symptoms.
Dutch officials from government departments of transport and of public health asserted that at the time of the crash it was understood that there were no health risks from any cargo on the plane; Els Borst, minister of public health, stated that "geen extreem giftige, zeer gevaarlijke of radioactieve stoffen" ("no extremely toxic, very dangerous, or radioactive materials") had been on board the plane. However, in October 1993, the nuclear energy research foundation Laka reported that the tail of the plane contained 282 kilograms (621.7 lb) of depleted uranium
as trim weight, as did all Boeing 747s at the time; this was not known during the rescue and recovery process.
It was suggested that studies be undertaken on the symptoms of the affected survivors and service personnel, but for several years these suggestions were ignored on the basis that there was no practical reason to believe in any link between the health complaints of the survivors and the Bijlmer crash site.
In 1997, however, an expert testified in the Israel
i Knesset
that dangerous products would have been released during combustion of the depleted uranium in the tail of the Boeing 747.
The first studies on the symptoms reported by survivors, performed by the Academisch Medisch Centrum, began in May 1998. The AMC eventually concluded that up to a dozen cases of auto-immune disorders among the survivors could be directly attributed to the crash, and health notices were distributed to doctors throughout the Netherlands requesting that extra attention be paid to symptoms of auto-immune disorder, particularly if the patient had a link with the Bijlmer crash site. Another study, performed by the Rijks Instituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieuhygiene
, concluded that although toxic products had been released at the time of the crash, the added risks of cancer were small, approximately one or two additional cases per ten thousand exposed persons. The RIVM also concluded that the chances of uranium poisoning were minimal.
In September 1993, the media reported that the El Al Boeing contained dangerous cargo. Some portion of the cargo proved to be Israel
i national defense materials. It was also reported that a third of the cargo had not been physically inspected and that the cargo listings had not been checked.
The survivors' health complaints following the crash increased the number of questions about the cargo.
In 1998 it was publicly revealed by El-Al spokesman Nachman klieman that 190 liters of dimethyl methylphosphonate
, a CWC schedule 2 chemical which, among many other uses, can be used for the synthesis of Sarin
nerve gas, had been included in the cargo. Israel stated that the material was non-toxic, was to have been used to test filters that protect against chemical weapons, and that it had been clearly listed on the cargo manifest in accordance with international regulations. The Dutch foreign ministry confirmed that it had already known about the presence of chemicals on the plane. The shipment was from a U.S. chemical plant to the Israel Institute for Biological Research
under a U.S. Department of Commerce
license.
and Georges Descombes, was built near the crash site with a listing of all the victims.
CONTROLLER: Turn right heading two six zero, field eh... behind you, eh.... in your – to the west, eh ....distance one eight miles
El Al 1862: Roger, we have fire on engine number three, we have fire on engine number three
CONTROLLER: Roger, heading two seven zero for downwind
El Al 1862: Two seven zero downwind
El Al 1862: El Al one eight six two, lost number three and number four engine, number three and number four engine
CONTROLLER: Roger, one eight six two
CONTROLLER: El Al one eight six two, continue descent one thousand five hundred feet...one thousand five hundred
El Al 1862: Fifteen hundred, and we have a controlling problem
CONTROLLER: You have a controlling problem as well, roger
El Al 1862: [In the background, in Hebrew] – Raise all the flaps, all the flaps raise
El Al 1862: [In the background, in Hebrew] – Lower the gear
El Al 1862: Going down...eh...one eight six two, going down, going down, copied going down
Boeing 747
The Boeing 747 is a wide-body commercial airliner and cargo transport, often referred to by its original nickname, Jumbo Jet, or Queen of the Skies. It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first wide-body ever produced...
cargo plane of the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i airline El Al
El Al
El Al Israel Airlines Ltd , trading as El Al , is the flag carrier of Israel. It operates scheduled domestic and international services and cargo flights to Europe, North America, Africa and the Far East from its main base in Ben Gurion International Airport...
, crashed into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer
Bijlmermeer
The Bijlmermeer or colloquially Bijlmer is one of the neighbourhoods that form the Amsterdam Zuidoost borough of Amsterdam, Netherlands. To many people, the Bijlmer designation is used to refer to Amsterdam Zuidoost and Diemen Zuid as a pars pro toto...
(colloquially "Bijlmer") neighbourhood (part of Amsterdam Zuidoost
Amsterdam Zuidoost
Amsterdam-Zuidoost is one of fifteen boroughs of the city of Amsterdam. It consists of four residential areas—Bijlmermeer, Venserpolder, Gaasperdam and Driemond—as well as the Amstel III/Bullewijk Business Park and the ArenA Boulevard area.Amsterdam-Zuidoost has approximately 86,000...
) of Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, the Netherlands. For the location in the Bijlmermeer, the crash is known in Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
as the "Bijlmerramp" ("Bijlmer disaster"). A total of 43 people were killed, consisting of the plane's crew of three and a non-revenue passenger in a jump seat
Jump seat
A jump seat , in aviation refers to an auxiliary seat for individuals — other than normal passengers — who are not operating the aircraft. In general, the term 'jump seat' can also refer to a seat — in any type of vehicle — which can fold up out of the way; vehicles include carriages, automobiles,...
, plus 39 people on the ground. Many more were injured.
Fatal flight
Boeing 747
The Boeing 747 is a wide-body commercial airliner and cargo transport, often referred to by its original nickname, Jumbo Jet, or Queen of the Skies. It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first wide-body ever produced...
, registration 4X-AXG, was traveling from John F. Kennedy International Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport is an international airport located in the borough of Queens in New York City, about southeast of Lower Manhattan. It is the busiest international air passenger gateway to the United States, handling more international traffic than any other airport in North...
to Ben Gurion International Airport
Ben Gurion International Airport
Ben Gurion International Airport , also referred to by its Hebrew acronym Natbag , is the largest and busiest international airport in Israel, handling 12,160,339 passengers in 2010...
and made a stopover at Schiphol
Amsterdam Schiphol Airport
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol ) is the Netherlands' main international airport, located 20 minutes southwest of Amsterdam, in the municipality of Haarlemmermeer. The airport's official English name, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, reflects the original Dutch word order...
. During the flight from New York to Schiphol, three issues were noted: fluctuations in the autopilot
Autopilot
An autopilot is a mechanical, electrical, or hydraulic system used to guide a vehicle without assistance from a human being. An autopilot can refer specifically to aircraft, self-steering gear for boats, or auto guidance of space craft and missiles...
speed regulation, problems with the shortwave radio, and fluctuations in the voltage of engine number
Aircraft engine position number
Aircraft engine position number is a method to identify the location of engines on multi-engined aircraft. Aircraft engines are numbered from left to right from the view of the pilot looking forward.-Twin-engined aircraft:* #1 - port - on the left...
three.
The jet landed at Schiphol at 2:31 pm local time. New cargo was loaded into the plane; the cargo had been approved by customs authorities, but as was realized later, had not been physically inspected. The aircraft was refueled and the observed issues were repaired, at least provisionally. Captain Yitzhak Fuchs, First Officer Arnon Ohad, and Flight Engineer
Flight engineer
Flight engineers work in three types of aircraft: fixed-wing , rotary wing , and space flight .As airplanes became even larger requiring more engines and complex systems to operate, the workload on the two pilots became excessive during certain critical parts of the flight regime, notably takeoffs...
Gedalya Sofer crewed the aircraft. Anat Solomon, the only passenger on board, was traveling to Tel Aviv to marry an El Al employee. Yitzhak Fuchs was an experienced aviator, having previously flown as a fighter-bomber pilot, flying the De Havilland Mosquito
De Havilland Mosquito
The de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito was a British multi-role combat aircraft that served during the Second World War and the postwar era. It was known affectionately as the "Mossie" to its crews and was also nicknamed "The Wooden Wonder"...
in the late 1950s Israeli Air Force.
Departure from Schiphol
Flight 1862 was scheduled to depart at 5:30 pm, but the flight was delayed until 6:20 pm. At 6:22 pm, Flight 1862 departed from runway 01L on a northerly heading. Once airborne, the plane turned to the right in order to follow the Pampus departure route, aided by the Pampus VORVHF omnidirectional range
VOR, short for VHF omnidirectional radio range, is a type of radio navigation system for aircraft. A VOR ground station broadcasts a VHF radio composite signal including the station's identifier, voice , and navigation signal. The identifier is typically a two- or three-letter string in Morse code...
/DME
Distance Measuring Equipment
Distance measuring equipment is a transponder-based radio navigation technology that measures distance by timing the propagation delay of VHF or UHF radio signals....
navigation station. Soon after the turn, at 6:27 pm, above the Gooimeer
Gooimeer
The Gooimeer is a bordering lake in the Netherlands between the southeastern part of North Holland and Flevoland....
, a lake near Amsterdam, a sharp bang was heard while the aircraft was climbing through 6500 feet. Engine number three separated from the right wing of the aircraft, damaged the wing flaps, and struck engine number four, which then also separated from the wing. The two engines fell away from the plane. They attracted the attention of some pleasure boaters who had been startled by the loud noise. The boaters notified the Netherlands Coastguard
Netherlands Coastguard
The Netherlands Coastguard or Nederlandse Kustwacht is a national organisation responsible for various services along the Netherlands' coast line ....
of two objects they had seen falling from the sky. Captain Fuchs made a mayday
Mayday (distress signal)
Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications. It derives from the French venez m'aider, meaning "come help me"....
call to air traffic control
Air traffic control
Air traffic control is a service provided by ground-based controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and in the air. The primary purpose of ATC systems worldwide is to separate aircraft to prevent collisions, to organize and expedite the flow of traffic, and to provide information and other...
(ATC) and indicated that he wanted to return to Schiphol. At 6:28:45 pm, the captain reported: "El Al 1862, lost number three and number four engine, number three and number four engine."
Emergency landing attempt
On the evening of 4 October 1992, the landing runway in use at Schiphol was runway 06. Captain Fuchs requested runway 27 for an emergency landing, even though that meant landing with a 21-knot quartering tailwind.The plane was too high and close in to land when it circled back to the airport. The captain was forced to continue circling Amsterdam until he could reduce his altitude to that required for a final approach to landing. During the second circle, the captain instructed the first officer to extend the wing flaps. The inboard trailing edge flaps extended, since they were powered by the number one hydraulic system, which was still functioning, but the outboard trailing edge flaps did not extend, because they were powered by the number four hydraulic system, which failed when the number four engine was torn from the right wing. That partial flap condition meant that the plane would have a higher pitch attitude than normal, as the plane slowed down. The leading edge flaps (powered by the pneumatic system) extended on the left wing, but not on the right wing, because of the damage inflicted on that wing when the right engines were torn off. That differential configuration caused the left wing to generate significantly more lift
Lift (force)
A fluid flowing past the surface of a body exerts a surface force on it. Lift is the component of this force that is perpendicular to the oncoming flow direction. It contrasts with the drag force, which is the component of the surface force parallel to the flow direction...
than the damaged right wing, especially when the pitch attitude increased as the airspeed decreased. The increased lift on the left side increased the tendency to roll further to the right, both because the right outboard aileron was inoperative and because the captain elected to increase the thrust on the left engines in an attempt to reduce his very high sink rate. As the aircraft slowed, the ability of the remaining controls to counteract the right roll diminished. The captain finally lost all ability to prevent the plane from rolling to the right. The roll reached 90 degrees just before the impact with the apartment houses.
At 6:35:25 pm, the first officer radioed to ATC: "Going down, 1862, going down, going down, copied, going down." In the background, the captain was heard instructing the first officer in Hebrew to raise the flaps and lower the landing gear.
Crash
At 6:35 pm local time, the Boeing 747, in nearly a ninety-degree bank with its right wing pointing at the ground, ploughed into two high-rise apartment complexes in the BijlmermeerBijlmermeer
The Bijlmermeer or colloquially Bijlmer is one of the neighbourhoods that form the Amsterdam Zuidoost borough of Amsterdam, Netherlands. To many people, the Bijlmer designation is used to refer to Amsterdam Zuidoost and Diemen Zuid as a pars pro toto...
neighborhood, at the corner of a building where the Groeneveen complex met the Klein-Kruitberg complex. The building exploded into flames and partially collapsed inward, destroying dozens of apartments. The cockpit came to rest east of the flats, between the building and the viaduct of Amsterdam Metro Line 53.
During the last moments of the flight, the arrival traffic controllers made several desperate attempts to contact the aircraft. The Schiphol arrival controllers work from a closed building at Schiphol-East, not from the control tower. At 6:35:45 pm, however, the control tower reported to the arrival controllers: "Het is gebeurd" (lit., "It has happened", but often meaning "It is over"). At that moment a large cloud of smoke was visible above Amsterdam from the control tower. El Al Flight 1862 disappeared from arrival control radar. The arrival controllers reported that the aircraft had last been located 1 mile west of Weesp
Weesp
Weesp is a town and a municipality in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It has a population of 17,533 .Weesp lies next to the rivers de Vecht and Smal Weesp and also next to the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal. It is in an area called the "Vechtstreek"...
and emergency personnel were sent immediately.
At the time of the crash, two police officers were in the Bijlmermeer
Bijlmermeer
The Bijlmermeer or colloquially Bijlmer is one of the neighbourhoods that form the Amsterdam Zuidoost borough of Amsterdam, Netherlands. To many people, the Bijlmer designation is used to refer to Amsterdam Zuidoost and Diemen Zuid as a pars pro toto...
checking on a burglary report. They saw the aircraft plummet and immediately sounded an alarm. The first fire trucks and rescue services arrived within a few minutes of the crash. Nearby hospitals were advised to prepare for hundreds of casualties. The flats were partly inhabited by undocumented illegal immigrants, and the death toll
Death Toll
Death Toll is a 2008 action film starring DMX, Lou Diamond Phillips, Leila Arcieri and Keshia Knight Pulliam, written and produced by Daniel Garcia of the rap group Kane & Abel and directed by Phenomenon...
would be difficult to estimate in the hours after the crash.
In the days immediately following the disaster, the bodies of the victims and the remains of the plane were recovered from the crash site. The remains of the plane were transported to Schiphol for analysis. The parts were not used by investigators to reconstruct the aircraft.
The aircraft's flight data recorder
Flight data recorder
A flight data recorder is an electronic device employed to record any instructions sent to any electronic systems on an aircraft. It is a device used to record specific aircraft performance parameters...
was recovered from the crash site, with its data intact. The cockpit voice recorder
Cockpit voice recorder
A cockpit voice recorder , often referred to as a "black box", is a flight recorder used to record the audio environment in the flight deck of an aircraft for the purpose of investigation of accidents and incidents...
, however, had been destroyed, although El Al employees stated that it had been installed in the aircraft.
Causes
In the event of excessive loads on the Boeing 747 engines or engine pylonsHardpoint
A hardpoint, or weapon station, is any part of an airframe designed to carry an external load. This includes a point on the wing or fuselage of military aircraft where external ordnance, countermeasures, gun pods, targeting pods or drop tanks can be mounted.-Rail launchers:Large missiles and...
, the fuse pins holding the engine nacelle to the wing are designed to fracture cleanly, allowing the engine to fall away from the aircraft without damaging the wing or wing fuel tank. Airliners are generally designed to remain airworthy in the event of an engine failure, so that the plane can be landed safely. Damage to a wing or wing fuel tank can have disastrous consequences. The Netherlands Aviation Safety Board found, however, that the fuse pins had not failed properly, but instead had suffered metal fatigue
Metal Fatigue
Metal Fatigue , is a futuristic science fiction, real-time strategy computer game developed by Zono Incorporated and published by Psygnosis and TalonSoft .-Plot:...
prior to overload failure. The Safety Board pieced together a probable sequence of events for the loss of engine 3:
1. Gradual failure by fatigueMetal FatigueMetal Fatigue , is a futuristic science fiction, real-time strategy computer game developed by Zono Incorporated and published by Psygnosis and TalonSoft .-Plot:...
and then overload failure of the inboard mid-spar fuse pin at the inboard thin-walled location.
2. Overload failure of the outer lug of the inboard mid-spar pylon fitting.
3. Overload failure of the outboard mid-spar fuse pin at the outboard thin-walled and fatigue-cracked location.
4. Overload failure of the outboard mid-spar fuse pin at the inboard thin-walled location.
This sequence of step-by-step failures caused the engine and pylon to break free, knocking outboard engine 4 and its pylon off the wing as well and inflicting serious damage on the leading edge of the right wing, including the control surfaces (flaps) that Captain Fuchs later tried to extend in flight.
Research indicated that the plane had only managed to maintain level flight at first due to its high air speed (280 knots). The damage to the right wing, resulting in reduced lift, had made it much more difficult to keep the plane level. At 280 knots (548.8 km/h), there was nevertheless sufficient lift on the right wing to keep the plane aloft. Once the plane had to reduce speed for landing, however, it was doomed; there was too little lift on the right wing to enable stable flight, and the plane banked sharply to the right without any chance of recovery.
The official probable causes were determined to be:
Official victim count
1500 people were considered missing immediately after the crash. The Dutch government originally estimated a death toll of over 200. In the end, the official death toll on the ground stood at 39, considerably lower than expected. The plane carried only the flight crew and one non-revenue passenger, thus the total number of deaths is 43. At the time of the crash many potential victims were not at home, possibly because of the pleasant weather on the evening of the crash. Twenty-six victims were found. Eleven of these had been taken to the hospital.Rumors have persisted that the actual ground victim count must have been higher than 39, but the victims' bodies were completely incinerated. The apartment complexes where the El Al flight crashed contained many undocumented residents, illegal immigrants to the Netherlands. The Dutch parliamentary inquiry commission concluded during the investigation that the number of found bodies was more or less commensurate with the final number of missing persons, and that therefore there were no reasons to suspect that the actual ground death toll was higher than 39.
Health issues
Mental health care was available after the crash to all affected residents and service personnel. After about a year, however, many residents and service personnel began approaching doctors with physical health complaints, which the affected patients blamed on the El Al crash. Insomnia, chronic respiratory infections, general pain and discomfort, impotence, flatulence, and bowel complaints were all reported. 67% of the affected patients were found to be infected with MycoplasmaMycoplasma
Mycoplasma refers to a genus of bacteria that lack a cell wall. Without a cell wall, they are unaffected by many common antibiotics such as penicillin or other beta-lactam antibiotics that target cell wall synthesis. They can be parasitic or saprotrophic. Several species are pathogenic in humans,...
, and suffered from symptoms similar to the Gulf War Syndrome
Gulf War syndrome
Gulf War syndrome or Gulf War illness describes a medical condition that affected veterans and civilians who were near conflicts during or downwind of chemical weapons depot demolition, after the 1991 Gulf War. A wide range of acute and chronic symptoms have included fatigue, musculoskeletal...
or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Chronic fatigue syndrome is the most common name used to designate a significantly debilitating medical disorder or group of disorders generally defined by persistent fatigue accompanied by other specific symptoms for a minimum of six months, not due to ongoing exertion, not substantially...
-like symptoms.
Dutch officials from government departments of transport and of public health asserted that at the time of the crash it was understood that there were no health risks from any cargo on the plane; Els Borst, minister of public health, stated that "geen extreem giftige, zeer gevaarlijke of radioactieve stoffen" ("no extremely toxic, very dangerous, or radioactive materials") had been on board the plane. However, in October 1993, the nuclear energy research foundation Laka reported that the tail of the plane contained 282 kilograms (621.7 lb) of depleted uranium
Depleted uranium
Depleted uranium is uranium with a lower content of the fissile isotope U-235 than natural uranium . Uses of DU take advantage of its very high density of 19.1 g/cm3...
as trim weight, as did all Boeing 747s at the time; this was not known during the rescue and recovery process.
It was suggested that studies be undertaken on the symptoms of the affected survivors and service personnel, but for several years these suggestions were ignored on the basis that there was no practical reason to believe in any link between the health complaints of the survivors and the Bijlmer crash site.
In 1997, however, an expert testified in the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
that dangerous products would have been released during combustion of the depleted uranium in the tail of the Boeing 747.
The first studies on the symptoms reported by survivors, performed by the Academisch Medisch Centrum, began in May 1998. The AMC eventually concluded that up to a dozen cases of auto-immune disorders among the survivors could be directly attributed to the crash, and health notices were distributed to doctors throughout the Netherlands requesting that extra attention be paid to symptoms of auto-immune disorder, particularly if the patient had a link with the Bijlmer crash site. Another study, performed by the Rijks Instituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieuhygiene
Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment
The Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment , is a Dutch research institute that is an independent agency of the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport....
, concluded that although toxic products had been released at the time of the crash, the added risks of cancer were small, approximately one or two additional cases per ten thousand exposed persons. The RIVM also concluded that the chances of uranium poisoning were minimal.
Cargo
Soon after the disaster it was announced that the El Al Boeing 747 had contained fruit, perfumes, and computer components. Dutch Minister Hanja Maij-Weggen asserted that she was certain that the plane contained no military cargo.In September 1993, the media reported that the El Al Boeing contained dangerous cargo. Some portion of the cargo proved to be Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i national defense materials. It was also reported that a third of the cargo had not been physically inspected and that the cargo listings had not been checked.
The survivors' health complaints following the crash increased the number of questions about the cargo.
In 1998 it was publicly revealed by El-Al spokesman Nachman klieman that 190 liters of dimethyl methylphosphonate
Dimethyl methylphosphonate
Dimethyl methylphosphonate, or methylphosphonic acid dimethyl ester , is a colorless liquid with chemical formula 393 or CH3PO2. It is combustible. It emits a distinct odor. It can be found in household radiators, especially those installed in the former Soviet Bloc. In contact with water it...
, a CWC schedule 2 chemical which, among many other uses, can be used for the synthesis of Sarin
Sarin
Sarin, or GB, is an organophosphorus compound with the formula [2CHO]CH3PF. It is a colorless, odorless liquid, which is used as a chemical weapon. It has been classified as a weapon of mass destruction in UN Resolution 687...
nerve gas, had been included in the cargo. Israel stated that the material was non-toxic, was to have been used to test filters that protect against chemical weapons, and that it had been clearly listed on the cargo manifest in accordance with international regulations. The Dutch foreign ministry confirmed that it had already known about the presence of chemicals on the plane. The shipment was from a U.S. chemical plant to the Israel Institute for Biological Research
Israel Institute for Biological Research
Israel Institute for Biological Research is a government defense research institute specializing in biology, medicinal chemistry and environmental science, and is suspected of also developing biological and chemical weapons, as well as defenses against them. It is located in Ness Ziona, 20...
under a U.S. Department of Commerce
United States Department of Commerce
The United States Department of Commerce is the Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with promoting economic growth. It was originally created as the United States Department of Commerce and Labor on February 14, 1903...
license.
Alterations to Boeing aircraft
After the crash investigation, Boeing issued a service directive regarding the faulty fuse pins on Boeing 747 aircraft. The 747s had their engines taken off and examined for cracks in the fuse pins. If cracks were present, the fuse pins were replaced.Memorial
A memorial, designed by architects Herman HertzbergerHerman Hertzberger
Herman Hertzberger is a Dutch architect and emeritus professor.-Biography:Herman Hertzberger was born on 6 July 1932 in Amsterdam, Netherlands....
and Georges Descombes, was built near the crash site with a listing of all the victims.
Communication recording between ground control and El AL 1862 flight crew
This is a small excerpt of the available transcript.CONTROLLER: Turn right heading two six zero, field eh... behind you, eh.... in your – to the west, eh ....distance one eight miles
El Al 1862: Roger, we have fire on engine number three, we have fire on engine number three
CONTROLLER: Roger, heading two seven zero for downwind
El Al 1862: Two seven zero downwind
El Al 1862: El Al one eight six two, lost number three and number four engine, number three and number four engine
CONTROLLER: Roger, one eight six two
CONTROLLER: El Al one eight six two, continue descent one thousand five hundred feet...one thousand five hundred
El Al 1862: Fifteen hundred, and we have a controlling problem
CONTROLLER: You have a controlling problem as well, roger
El Al 1862: [In the background, in Hebrew] – Raise all the flaps, all the flaps raise
El Al 1862: [In the background, in Hebrew] – Lower the gear
El Al 1862: Going down...eh...one eight six two, going down, going down, copied going down
See also
- List of notable accidents and incidents on commercial aircraft
- China Airlines Flight 358China Airlines Flight 358China Airlines Flight 358 was a Boeing 747-2R7F freighter plane that crashed on December 29, 1991 shortly after takeoff from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taipei, Taiwan. The aircraft was a 747, registration B-198, that had been in service for 11 years, 3 months . The aircraft had...
– 29 December 1991 – engines and leading edge slatsLeading edge slatsSlats are aerodynamic surfaces on the leading edge of the wings of fixed-wing aircraft which, when deployed, allow the wing to operate at a higher angle of attack. A higher coefficient of lift is produced as a result of angle of attack and speed, so by deploying slats an aircraft can fly at slower...
loss on one wing during takeoff. - American Airlines Flight 191American Airlines Flight 191American Airlines Flight 191 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight in the United States from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, to Los Angeles International Airport. On May 25, 1979, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 operating the route crashed moments after takeoff from Chicago....
– 25 May 1979 – engine and leading edge slatsLeading edge slatsSlats are aerodynamic surfaces on the leading edge of the wings of fixed-wing aircraft which, when deployed, allow the wing to operate at a higher angle of attack. A higher coefficient of lift is produced as a result of angle of attack and speed, so by deploying slats an aircraft can fly at slower...
loss on one wing during takeoff. - Air safety
Further reading
- Theo Bean, Een gat in mijn hart: een boek gebaseerd op tekeningen en teksten van kinderen na de vliegramp in de Bijlmermeer van 4 oktober 1992. Zwolle: Waanders, 1993.
- Vincent Dekker, Going down, going down: De ware toedracht van de Bijlmerramp. Amsterdam: Pandora, 1999.
- Een beladen vlucht: eindrapport Bijlmer enquête. Sdu Uitgevers, 1999.
- Pierre Heijboer, Doemvlucht: de verzwegen geheimen van de Bijlmerramp. Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 2002.
- R. J. H. Wanhill and A. Oldersma, Fatigue and Fracture in an Aircraft Engine Pylon, Nationaal Lucht- en Ruimtevaartlaboratorium (NLR TP 96719).
- This event is featured on the National Geographic ChannelNational Geographic ChannelNational Geographic Channel, also commercially abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo, is a subscription television channel that airs non-fiction television programs produced by the National Geographic Society. Like History and the Discovery Channel, the channel features documentaries with factual...
show Seconds From DisasterSeconds From Disaster-By original broadcast date:National Geographic Channel has broadcast many episodes under multiple titles. The title currently or most recently listed on the NGC Calendar is shown first...
.