Faulty altimeter contributed to airplane crash in Amsterdam
PARIS: A faulty altimeter contributed to the fatal crash last week of a Turkish Airlines jet that plunged into a field on its approach to Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, Dutch officials said Wednesday.
They added that they had asked Boeing to alert users of the aircraft about possible risks.
The Dutch Safety Board, which is investigating the Feb. 25 accident, said one of the aircraft's two radio altimeters, an instrument that gauges a plane's altitude, sent a wrong reading to the automatic pilot system, resulting in an abrupt loss of airspeed.
Witnesses said the Boeing 737-800 aircraft, carrying 135 people, appeared to drop like a stone. It landed first on its tail, then slammed into the ground, skidded on its belly and broke into three parts just short of the runway. Nine people on flight TK1951 from Istanbul, including the three pilots, were killed.
During its descent, when the aircraft was at 1,950 feet, or 594 meters, the left altimeter suddenly indicated a change in altitude to minus 8 feet, and sent that reading to the autopilot system, according to a report released Wednesday.
"The aircraft reacted as if it were two meters above the ground," said Fred Sanders, a spokesman for the Dutch Safety Board.
Sanders said the flight recordings showed that the plane had experienced problems with its left radio altimeter twice before, in similar pre-landing situations. "We have asked Boeing to warn users of this system and this type of plane," he said.
Boeing said Wednesday that it was reminding its 737 operators to "carefully monitor primary flight instruments during critical phases of flight."
Gideon Ewers, a spokesman for the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations in London, said it was not unusual that the plane was landing on autopilot.
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International Herald Tribune
