Martinair Flight 138

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Martinair Flight 138
Martinair Douglas DC-8-32 Volpati-1.jpg

A similar DC-8 from the Martinair
Accident summary
Accident type Controlled Flight into Terrain
place Maskeliya , Central Province , Sri LankaSri LankaSri Lanka 
date 4th December 1974
Fatalities 191
Survivors 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type United StatesUnited States Douglas DC-8-55CF Jet Trader
operator NetherlandsNetherlandsMartinair for Garuda Indonesia
IndonesiaIndonesia
Mark NetherlandsNetherlandsPH-MBH
Departure airport Juanda Airport , Indonesia
IndonesiaIndonesia 
Stopover Bandaranaike International Airport , Sri LankaSri LankaSri Lanka 
Destination airport Jeddah Airport (old) , Saudi Arabia
Saudi ArabiaSaudi Arabia 
Passengers 182
crew 9
Lists of aviation accidents

On December 4, 1974 crashed on the Martinair Flight 138 (Flight number: MP138 ) one on behalf of the Garuda Indonesia operated charter airline Douglas DC-8-55CF Jet Trader of Martinair after the machine flying over Sri Lanka had fallen below the minimum flight altitude. All 191 inmates were killed in the accident. At the time, it was the worst accident involving a Douglas DC-8 and the second worst in the world.

background

As the state airline of the world's largest Muslim country, Garuda Indonesia had to handle a steadily growing number of pilgrims during the Hajj season in the early 1970s . With the development of the large long-haul Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 passenger jets with spacious passenger cabins, it became possible to take a short trip to the holy places in Mecca from far-off Indonesia . More and more people willing to travel took up this offer. As the seasonal demand far exceeded the passenger capacity of the Garuda fleet, the airline hired external airlines to carry out the pilgrimage flights for the Hajj season. One of these airlines was Martinair from the Netherlands, which among other things used their Douglas DC-8-55CF PH-MBH for the flights .

plane

The crashed machine was a nine-year-old Douglas DC-8-55CF Jet Trader, which was assembled at the Douglas factory in Long Beach , California and which was rolled out on October 26, 1965. The aircraft had the factory number 45818, it was the 242nd Douglas DC-8 from ongoing production. The DC-8 was certified with the aircraft registration N802SW . The aircraft was ordered by the Flying Tiger Line , which it did not use itself, but leased it directly to Seaboard World Airlines . The machine received this on November 13, 1965. From January 22 to April 2, 1969, Seaboard World Airlines leased the machine to the Douglas Aircraft Company . From April 2, 1969, the machine was used again by Seabord World Airlines. In October 1969, International Aerodyne took over the machine as owner and lessor, and from October 17, 1969 it leased it to International Air Bahama , and from May 21, 1970 to Trans Mediterranean Airways . From May 1, 1971, the machine was leased again to Seaboard World Airlines, which leased it to Loftleiðir from October 1, 1971 , where the machine was given the new aircraft registration TF-LLK and the name Leifur Eiríksson . On September 21, 1973, the Dutch Martinair bought the machine, which has now been given the new license plate PH-MBH . From December 1, 1974, the aircraft was leased to Garuda Indonesia and operated for this. The four-engine long-range - narrow-body aircraft was equipped with four engines of the type Pratt & Whitney Jt3d-3B equipped. By the time of the accident, the machine had completed 35,613 operating hours.

Crew and passengers

A panorama of the Virgin Hills the machine hit
Close-up with marked point of impact

There were 191 people on board. These consisted of 182 Indonesian passengers and the nine-person Dutch crew. The three-person cockpit crew consisted of a flight captain, a first officer and a flight engineer:

  • The 33-year-old first officer Robert Blomsma was in possession of an expired type rating for the Douglas DC-3 and more recent for the Fokker F28 and Douglas DC-8 types . He had 2,480 hours of flight experience, including 2,193 as first officer on board a Fokker F28 and 47 hours in the cockpit of a Douglas DC-8.
  • The 48-year-old flight engineer Johannes Gijsbertus Wijnands had 6866 hours of flight experience with the Douglas DC-3, 1459 hours with the Convair CV-240, 1079 with the Convair CV-340, 450 hours with the Douglas DC-7C and 800 hours with the Douglas DC-7, and more than 3000 flight hours in the cockpit of the Douglas DC-8.

The six-person cabin crew included the purser Ingrid van der Vliet and the flight attendants Henrietta Borghols, Abdul Hamid Usman, Lilik Herawati, Titia van Dijkum and Hendrika van Hamburg. The 182 passengers boarded in Surabaya were all Indonesian citizens who wanted to undertake a Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Course of the flight and course of the accident

The flight took off at 12:03 p.m. UTC from Juanda Airport in Surabaya. The flight was to go to Jeddah Airport in Saudi Arabia , with a scheduled stop at Bandaranaike International Airport in Sri Lanka . At 16:16, the crew reported to the approach control at Bandaranaike Airport and stated their distance to the airport as 130 nautical miles (approx. 241 kilometers) and their altitude as 35,000 feet (approx. 10668 meters). At around 4:30 p.m., air traffic control gave the instruction to descend to 15,000 feet (approx. 4,572 meters), and at 4:38 p.m., when the machine was 50 nautical miles (approx. 93 kilometers) from the airport, air traffic control gave this Clearance for the next phase of descent to 5000 feet (approx. 1524 meters). At 16:44, the air traffic controller gave the instruction to descend to 2000 feet (approx. 610 meters) and informed the pilots that their aircraft was scheduled to land on runway 04. The crew confirmed receipt of the radio message. The air traffic controller instructed the crew to report as soon as they overflowed the KAT circular beacon . The pilots meanwhile continued the descent.

A little later, the machine flew at an altitude of 4,355 feet (about 1,327 meters) against the fifth mountain of the freestanding and 40 nautical miles (74 kilometers) east of Colombo , Saptha Kanya mountain range . On the first impact, part of the left wing tore off with an engine. The machine then leaned almost 90 degrees downwards along its transverse axis, while at the same time it rolled to the side along its longitudinal axis by almost 180 degrees and was finally hurled against a rock wall, on which it crashed. All 191 inmates were killed.

root cause

The cause of the accident was determined to be a collision with a mountain, which occurred after the position of the machine was incorrectly identified in radio communications with air traffic control. The crew then flown the machine below the minimum descent altitude. The investigative commission concluded that the crew had relied too much on the displays of the Doppler and weather radars , which left room for misinterpretation.

meaning

At the time, it was the second most serious accident in the world after a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crashed on Turkish Airlines flight 981 that same year . In Sri Lanka it is still the worst accident (as of August 2019). It was also the worst accident with a Douglas DC-8 at the time . It is the third worst after the aviation accidents on Arrow Air Flight 1285 in 1985 and Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 in 1991.

Commemoration

A small memorial was erected in Nortonbridge, not far from the crash site. A landing gear tire that was recovered from the crash site was used for this purpose. Although the tire is on public display, it is owned by Nortonbridge Police. The musician Anton Jones from Sri Lanka wrote the song "DC8", which is about the accident.

  • The Nortonbridge Memorial

  • The salvaged undercarriage tire

  • Memorial to the victims of the air accident

A second memorial was built by relatives of the accident victims at the foot of the mountain where the machine crashed. Around 30 years after the accident, the Martinair added a memorial plaque, but only the names of the crew members were engraved on it. At the airport Lelystad another memorial was erected.

Parallels to the Icelandic Airlines accident in November 1978

On November 15, 1978, another Douglas DC-8 crashed on Loftleiðir flight 001 , which also carried out a pilgrimage on behalf of Garuda Indonesia on the same flight route, but in the opposite direction. It was again a controlled flight into terrain , which in this case did not take place against a rock wall but in a field 2 kilometers in front of Bandaranaike International Airport . The cause here was also a misunderstanding between the aircraft crew and air traffic control. There were survivors in this incident, but the number of victims was similar with 183 dead. The flight was operated by the Icelandic airline Loftleiðir , which was also one of the previous lessees of the Martinair machine. Ironically, the airline had given both of the crashed planes the same name, Leifur Eiríksson .

swell

Coordinates: 6 ° 54 '  N , 80 ° 29'  E