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Torment of boy who survived jet crash
Tom Worden in Madrid21.08.08
A boy of eight survived the Madrid air crash in which his father was killed and his mother left in a coma.
Alfredo Acosta Mendiola was pulled from the burning wreckage of the Spanair jet crying for his parents.
But his Colombian-born father Alfredo Acosta Sierra, 60, was one of the 153 to be killed, and his mother Gregoria Mendiola Rodriguez, 45, was today fighting for her life.
Alfredo was being treated for a broken leg in the Nino Jesus hospital in Madrid. His mother is in a coma in another hospital.
A rescue worker called Maria today said Alfredo was crying out for his parents as he was taken to hospital.
She told Spanish TV: "He was very together, complaining about some pain, but what most worried him was finding his parents."
Two other children besides Alfredo survived the crash. One was an 11-year-old girl with a broken leg and the other a six-year-old boy with serious head injuries.
Maria said the girl "was also asking constantly for her mother, who she identified as Amaya".
Their survival astonished emergency services who were confronted with "a scene from hell". Only 19 people survived. They were being treated in hospital today as Spain started three days of mourning.
It was revealed today that the Mcdonnell Douglas MD82 plane had an overheating fault fixed minutes before it caught on fire and plunged to the ground. Officials from Spanair said it was overheating in an air intake valve before a first attempt at take-off and was fixed before the second attempt - but they said it was unclear if that caused the crash.
Beatriz Reyes Ojeda told how she walked away from the disaster with little memory of what happened. She told her sister Laura: "I noticed something was wrong with the plane. The other memory is that I lifted my head up and the plane had no roof."
She was returning home to Gran Canaria from a holiday in South Africa with two friends, who were not on the flight.
When the flight was delayed she phoned her brother Carlos from inside the plane asking him to pick her up at Las Palmas airport. Amazingly, she survived and called Carlos to say: "Hello, I've been in an accident, but I'm OK."
Another rescue worker said: "I rescued seven people but there were a lot of dead. All you could see of the plane was the motors, because it was totally charred."
Among the wreckage was the body of one of two babies feared dead.
The body of the captain, Antonio Luna, from Majorca, has been identified. Both his arms were broken, indicating he may have tried to brake as flight JK5022 crashed at 2.45pm.
Shortly before the Spanair jet took off the experienced pilot spoke to technicians about a problem. Company spokesman Javier Mendoza said today the problem was fixed using a standard procedure and the plane was then cleared for take-off by company technicians.
Passengers waited nearly two hours on the plane while the fault was fixed.
Cabin crew on an Iberia flight from Ecuador then watched in horror as the MD-82's engine caught fire. A stewardess heard a member of her crew say: "That plane is not taking off. It's eating the runway. That plane's not going in the air."
Most of the plane's 162 passengers were Spanish. Two Swedes and a Chilean were on board, and a Colombian survived. There are thought to have been four German passengers.
A spokeswoman for the mayor in Alfredo's home village said: "What happened is a total tragedy and the village has been devastated by this news." The family lived in the village of Torralba de Calatrava, in the province of Ciudad Real, 130 miles south of Madrid. They were flying to the Canary Islands for a holiday.
