150 dead in Madrid plane crash

[NoToRi0uS]

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150 dead in Madrid plane crash As many as 150 people were feared killed today when a packed passenger jet caught fire and overshot the runway as it tried to take off from Madrid’s main international airport.
The Spanair plane crashed and broke apart after failing to lift off from runway No 6 at the Barajas airport. It was headed for Las Palmas airport on the island of Gran Canaria.
Reuters news agency quoted sources in the emergency services as saying that all but 25 of the 173 people aboard - 164 passengers and nine crew - had been killed. That was far ahead of the official death toll of around 45. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Prime Minister, convened an emergency Cabinet session to discuss Spain’s worst aviation disaster for more than 20 years.
The airport was immediately closed as firefighters aboard 11 engines tried to tackle a blaze on the plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82. Forty-five ambulances were sent to the scene.
Initial reports suggested that an engine on the left hand side of the aircraft caught fire as the plane headed down the runway, impeding its take-off and sending it careening off onto a grassy area near the terminal building. The smoke could be seen several kilometres away.
El Pais reported that the aircraft had already attempted one take-off but had had unspecified difficulties. Another newspaper, La Vanguardia, said that the pilot had been unable to lift the plane’s nose.
Flight JKK 5022 was on a codeshare with Lufthansa flight LH 255, which prompted speculation that some of the passengers may have been Germans.
Relatives of those aboard the plane soon began arriving at the airport, where a spokesman said that a room had been set aside for them and pyschological counselling was on offer.
Eight injured passengers were taken to the La Paz hospital and a further eight to the Ramon y Cajal. Other Madrid hospitals were told to free up facilities - although it was unclear whether they would be needed given the heavy death toll.
In the last ten years, 42 people have been killed in plane accidents in Spain. Today’s crash might prove even more deadly than one in Bilbao in February 1985, in which 148 people were killed.
The worst plane crash in Spain’s history was on March 27, 1977, when two planes collided at Los Rodeos airport in Tenerife, killing 585 people.
Spanair is a subsidiary of the Scandinavian airline SAS, which said in a statement: “Spanair is doing everything possible to assist the Spanish authorities at this difficult time. Spanair will provide further information as soon as it becomes available.”
The crash came just hours after pilots at the airline threatened to strike over SAS’s cost-cutting plans at the struggling Majorca-based airline, which has been making heavy losses.
From Times Online

[samy]

so sad & so unfortunate to hear such great loss.

[bilal_musharraf]

thanks for centering the text! very helpful.