El Al Flight 1862

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El Al Flight 1862

Aftermath of the disaster.
Summary
Date	October 4, 1992
Type	Metal fatigue in the fuse pin, engine collision
Site	Amsterdam Zuidoost
Passengers	1
Crew	3
Injuries	11 serious, 15 minor (on ground)
Fatalities	43 (4 onboard, 39 on ground)
Operator	El Al
Tail number	4X-AXG
Flight origin	John F. Kennedy Int'l Airport  New York City, USA
Stopover	Amsterdam Schiphol Airport  Amsterdam, Netherlands
Destination	Ben Gurion Int'l Airport  Tel Aviv, Israel

Coordinates: 52°19′8″N, 4°58′30″E

On October 4, 1992, El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747 cargo plane of the Israeli airline El Al, crashed into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer (colloquially "Bijlmer") neighbourhood (part of Amsterdam Zuidoost) of Amsterdam, Netherlands. A total of 43 people were killed, consisting of the plane's crew of three and a non-revenue passenger in a jumpseat, plus 39 persons on the ground. Many more were injured.^[1][2][3]

Contents 1 Fatal flight 1.1 Departure from Schiphol 1.2 Emergency landing attempt 2 Crash 3 Causes 4 Official victim count 5 Health issues 6 Cargo concerns 7 Alterations to Boeing aircraft 8 Memorial 9 Media 10 See also 11 References 12 External links

[edit] Fatal flight

On October 4, 1992, the plane, a Boeing 747-258F, registration 4X-AXG, was traveling from New York to Tel Aviv 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 #3.

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 were on board. Anat Solomon, the only passenger on board, was an El Al employee traveling to Tel Aviv to marry an El Al colleague.

[edit] Departure from Schiphol

Flight 1862 was scheduled to depart at 5:30 PM, but departure was postponed till 6:20 PM. At 6:22 PM, Flight 1862 departed from runway 01L on a northerly heading. Once away from the runway, the plane turned to the right in order to follow the Pampus departure route, aided by the Pampus VOR/DME navigation station. Soon after the turn, at 6:27 pm, above the Gooimeer, a lake near Amsterdam, a sharp bang was heard while Flight 1862 was climbing through 6500 feet. Engine #3 separated from the right wing of the aircraft, damaged the wing flaps, and struck engine #4, 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 Coast Guard of two objects they had seen falling from the sky. Captain Fuchs made a mayday call to the control tower and indicated that he wanted to return to Schiphol. At 6:28:45 PM, the captain reported: "El Al 1862, lost number 3 and number 4 engine, number 3 and number 4 engine."

ATC did not yet grasp the enormity 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 actually 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.

[edit] Emergency landing attempt

On the evening of October 4, 1992, the runway available for traffic at Schiphol was runway 06 (the Kaagbaan). However, Captain Fuchs requested runway 27 (the Buitenveldertbaan) for an emergency landing. Because the wind was from the northeast that evening, the fully loaded plane would have had to land with considerable tailwind.

In order to first dump fuel to remove the plane's excess weight, and then to make a careful approach to the runway, the damaged aircraft navigated a circle above Amsterdam. During this circle the captain gave the first officer the order to extend the wing flaps. The flaps extended on the left wing, but because the falling engines had severely damaged the leading edge of the right wing, the right wing flaps could not be extended. As a result, the left wing experienced more lift than the right. Captain Fuchs, who could not see what had happened to the right wing, informed ATC of a problem with the flaps. Schiphol emergency fire services were positioned along runway 27 in order to immediately extinguish any fires upon landing.

Initially, the aircraft remained under control during its descent to the runway, but as it descended below 1500 feet and reduced speed, it banked sharply to the right and became uncontrollable. 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.

[edit] Crash

At 6:35 pm local time, the Boeing 747, in nearly a ninety-degree bank with its right wing pointing at the ground, plowed into two high-rise apartment complexes in the Bijlmermeer 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 an enormous 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. Immediately, emergency personnel were sent to Weesp.

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. Hundreds were feared dead. The flats were partly inhabited by undocumented illegal immigrants, and the death toll was 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 to reconstruct the aircraft. During the investigation, significant portions of the debris from the plane and the flats were sold as scrap.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Causes

In the event of excessive loads on the Boeing 747 engines or engine pylons, 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:

1. Gradual failure by fatigue 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.[1]

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, 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:^[3]

The design and certification of the B-747 pylon was found to be inadequate to provide the required level of safety. Furthermore the system to ensure structural integrity by inspection failed. This ultimately caused – probably initiated by fatigue in the inboard midspar fuse-pin – the no. 3 pylon and engine to separate from the wing in such a way that the no. 4 pylon and engine were torn off, part of the leading edge of the wing was damaged and the use of several systems was lost or limited. This subsequently left the flight crew with very limited control of the airplane. Because of the marginal controllability a safe landing became highly improbable, if not virtually impossible.

[edit] Official victim count

1,500 persons 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 due to the pleasant weather on the evening of the crash. Twenty-six victims were located. Eleven of these had been taken to the hospital.

Rumors have persisted that the actual ground victim count must have been higher than 39. At very high temperatures such as those encountered after the crash of a jet loaded with fuel, about 1100 degrees Celsius, bodies can be completely incinerated. Additionally, 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 located 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.

[edit] Health issues

Mental health care was available after the crash to all affected residents and service personnel. After about a year, however, numbers of 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.

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 very toxic, dangerous or radioactive materials") were on board the plane. However, in October 1993, the nuclear energy research foundation Laka reported that the tail of the plane contained 282 kg of depleted uranium as trim weight, as did all Boeing 747s at the time; this was not known during the rescue and recovery process.^[4][5]

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 Israeli 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.

[edit] Cargo concerns

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 Israeli 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 revealed that 190 liters of dimethyl methylphosphonate were 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 shipment was from a U.S. chemical plant to the Israel Institute for Biological Research under a U.S. Department of Commerce license.^[6][7]

[edit] 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.

[edit] Memorial

A memorial, designed by architects Herman Hertzberger and Georges Descombes, was built near the crash site with a listing of all the victims.^[8][9]

[edit] Media

• The timeline and causes of the crash were profiled in an episode of the National Geographic documentary series, Seconds From Disaster.

[edit] See also

• List of notable accidents and incidents on commercial aircraft
• China Airlines Flight 358 - December 29, 1991 - engines and leading edge slats loss on one wing during takeoff.
• American Airlines Flight 191 - May 25, 1979 engine and leading edge slats loss on one wing during takeoff.
• Air safety

[edit] References

• 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 Channel show Seconds From Disaster.

[edit] External links

• Corrosion Doctors' entry on El Al Flight 1862
• Photographs of the disaster on AirDisaster.com
• Google Maps view of site
• Pre-disaster photos from Airliners.net