Turkish Airlines Flight 301

Turkish Airlines Flight 301
	A Fokker F28 from Turkish Airlines, similar to the aircraft that crashed
Accident summary
Accident type	Stopped flow at take-off due to icing and excessive rotation
place	Izmir-Cumaovası Airport , Turkey
date	January 26, 1974
Fatalities	66
Survivors	7th
Injured	7th
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Fokker F28-1000
operator	Turkish Airlines
Mark	TC-JAO
Departure airport	Izmir-Cumaovası Airport , Turkey
Destination airport	Istanbul Yeşilköy Airport , Turkey
Passengers	68
crew	5
	Lists of aviation accidents

Turkish Airlines flight 301 (flight number: TK301 ) was a scheduled domestic flight of the Turkish airline Turkish Airlines from Izmir to Istanbul , in which a Fokker F28-1000 had an accident on January 26, 1974 while taking off at Izmir-Cumaovası airport in wintry conditions. In the accident 66 people were killed, only 7 survived.

At the time, it was the second most serious aircraft accident in Turkey and, up until the crash of a DC-10 near Paris a few weeks later, it was the most serious of Turkish Airlines.

plane

The machine was a Fokker F28-1000 , which had completed 2,269 flight hours and 3,133 take-offs and landings since it was first delivered to Turkish Airlines on September 5, 1972. The machine had been christened Van . It had the serial number 11057 and the aircraft registration TC-JAO and was equipped with two Rolls-Royce RB183-2 "Spey" Mk555-15 engines.

crew

The 37-year-old captain of the machine was in possession of type ratings for the aircraft types Fokker F-27 and Fokker F28. He had completed his pilot training at the Turkish Air Force Academy in 1958 and had completed 2,600 flight hours with the Air Force, including the North American F-86 , Lockheed F-104 and Beechcraft T-34 aircraft . In 1970 he left the air force and took a position as a pilot with Turkish Airlines. He was trained to pilot the Fokker F28 in the Netherlands and Turkey and was promoted to captain of this type of aircraft in 1972. A year later he was also approved as a test captain for the F28. At the time of the accident, the captain had completed 1903 flying hours on the Fokker F-27 and 577 on the Fokker F28.

The 36-year-old first officer had a type rating for the Fokker F28. He, too, had completed his pilot training at the Turkish Air Force Academy. By 1973, when he left the air force to take on as a pilot with Turkish Airlines, the first officer had accumulated 2,794 flight hours on the Douglas C-47 , Vickers Viscount and Douglas C-54 aircraft and the Sikorsky H-19 helicopter . He completed his training as a pilot of the Fokker F28 in the Netherlands and since then has worked exclusively with Turkish Airlines on this type of aircraft, with 395 hours of flight experience.

the accident

The same crew had already carried out flights with the same aircraft in the two days before. On January 24, she flew from Istanbul to Izmir, then to Athens and then back to Izmir, and spent the night at Izmir Airport. The day before she flew to Istanbul and back to Izmir. She had to cancel a second flight to Istanbul due to bad weather and return to Izmir. The crew also spent that night at the airport, where the plane was parked overnight.

After boarding all passengers was completed on the morning of January 26th, the pilot who was supposed to control the machine at take-off conducted a tour at 7:07 a.m. local time to inspect the machine.

The pilots received clearance to take off from runway 35 and the machine rolled to the runway on time. After a take-off run of 980 meters, the Fokker took off. At a height of 8 to 10 meters, the machine rolled slightly to the left and sank flat back to the ground. The machine hit a drainage ditch, skidded through the terrain, broke apart and caught fire.

Rescue operation

Airport employees and other eyewitnesses who had seen the accident immediately ran to the scene of the accident to rescue the injured before the plane burned out. Six passengers and one crew member were rescued alive from the machine, the remaining 66 occupants died. The airport fire brigade of the nearby Gaziemir military airport reached the crash site 10 minutes after the accident and was able to extinguish the burning aircraft after 30 minutes. Civilians and military personnel helped transport the injured to the surrounding hospitals.

Cause of accident

The day after the accident, an identically constructed Fokker F28 was examined, which, like the aircraft involved in the accident, was parked overnight at Izmir Airport. It was found that hoar frost had formed on the wings of the machine overnight. The left wing, facing away from the airport building, was less affected by the ice formation than the right. It was also found that on February 25, 1969, when a structurally identical Fokker F28 of the LTU took off from Hanover-Langenhagen Airport , a similar incident due to icing had occurred.

Rime on the wings and excessive rotation were noted as the causes of the accident : the crew had not had the machine de-iced before the flight and had pulled it up to a steep angle of attack during take-off . In doing so, she underestimated the atmospheric conditions. By the rime on the wings of the angle at which lifting without was stall would have been possible, less than no icing. It was also noted in the final report that the fire brigade was too poorly equipped to fight a fire of this size.

16 years after the accident, Hasan Ferda Güley , who was Minister of Transport at the time of the accident, stated that the pilots were drunk and that he had kept this a secret for years so as not to irrevocably shake people's trust.

consequences

After the accident, the flight from Izmir to Istanbul was given a new flight number. Almost exactly one year later, another Fokker F28 crashed on Turkish Airlines flight 345 on the same route.

Trivia

On February 6, 1996, Alas Nacionales flight 301 under the same flight number was another serious incident involving a Turkish airline with many dead.

Similar incidents

38.289167 27.155Coordinates: 38 ° 17 ′ 21 ″ N , 27 ° 9 ′ 18 ″ E

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Accident report F28-1000 TC-JAO , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on March 6, 2019.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ICAO report, from p. 109
↑ ICAO Aircraft Accident Digest No. 21, Circular 132-AN / 93 (English), pp. 109, 112-113.
↑ F28-1000 PH-ZAA , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on March 9, 2019.
↑ Milliyet: May 18, 1990 [1]

[ASN_Unfallbericht-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Accident report F28-1000 TC-JAO , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on March 6, 2019.

[ICAO-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ICAO report, from p. 109

[3] ICAO Aircraft Accident Digest No. 21, Circular 132-AN / 93 (English), pp. 109, 112-113.

[4] F28-1000 PH-ZAA , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on March 9, 2019.

[5] Milliyet: May 18, 1990 [1]