Morning:
8°c
'150 die' in holiday jet crash
Gerard Couzens20 Aug 2008
Up to 150 people are feared dead after a plane burst into flames during takeoff near Madrid this evening.
A state of emergency was declared at Barajas airport after the jet crashed on the runway.
Emergency services said only 25 of the 173 passengers and crew were believed to have survived. Two babies are thought to have been among those onboard.
The Spanair flight attempted to take off an hour-and-a-half late from the airport's terminal 4, bound for Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, at around 2.45pm local time .
But the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 was seen bursting into flames as it skidded off the runway and into grassland. The plane was reported to have split in two, with the blaze reaching the cockpit.
Huge columns of black smoke were still rising from the area where the plane crashed almost two hours after the accident.
Initial reports suggested that the plane - flight number AJK 5022 - lost power at take-off after one of its engines caught fire. Witnesses said the left motor began to burn shortly before take off.
One Spanish newspaper, El Pais, also reported that the jet crashed on its second attempt at take-off, having had problems on the first try.
Roads around the airport were shut this afternoon with emergency services including paramedics and firefighters and eleven fire engines at the scene. Terminal 4 services domestic Spanish flights although foreign holidaymakers could be among the dead.
An airport spokesman said: "We can confirm a Spanair plane bound for Gran Canaria has left the runway. A state of emergency is currently in place."
The spokesman added that he was not in a position to make any official statement on victims. Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported at least 50 had died although the authorities have not yet officially confirmed the number.
Barajas airport is owned by Ferrovial, the parent company of BAA, which was today ordered to sell off two of its three London airports.
The airport is Europe's fourth busiest, carrying more than 50 million passengers last year.
Spanair is Spain's second biggest airline. Its MD-82 passenger jet, is one of McDonnell Douglas's MD-80 series of aircraft which were at the centre of a major safety scare in the United States earlier this year.
In March and April this year, US carriers American Airlines and Delta were forced to ground their fleet, a total of more than 400 MD-80 series planes, to inspect the hydraulic wiring on the orders of the country's aviation safety watchdog.
A series of other US carriers have announced plans to retire their MD-80 series aircraft. All are at least 10 years old, with the earliest models entering service in 1980.
The last fatal crash of the series of aircraft was in 30 November 2007 in southwestern Turkey. All 57 onboard an MD-83 flown by Atlastjet died after the passenger jet crashed. The cause of that accident remains under investigation.
