A BRITISH woman was among three people killed when a KLM plane bound
for Cardiff crashed after take-off from Amsterdam's Schiphol airport
yesterday.
Holland's national carrier said the Dutch pilot, Captain G. Lievaart,
37, and two passengers were among the dead and that 13 of the 24 people
on board were seriously hurt.
The Foreign Office named the dead British woman as Mrs L. Samuel. Her
husband was also on board, and suffered injuries which were not
life-threatening. It was believed he did not know his wife had been
killed.
The other passenger who died was Mr V. Neo, who is thought to be
Singaporean.
Apart from Mrs Samuel, at least five other Britons were injured when
Cityhopper flight KL 433 crash-landed at Holland's biggest airport at
around 2.50pm, 30 minutes after take-off.
The Saab 340B, carrying 21 passengers, who were mostly British, and
three crew, was struck by engine problems over the North Sea and turned
back to Amsterdam.
As the Dutch pilot attempted to land the twin turbo-prop aircraft at
Schiphol it suddenly veered to the right and, as the wing hit the
ground, it broke up on muddy farmland, 300 yards from the runway.
The airport and the motorway alongside it were closed during the
emergency, but air services were operating again within an hour. Rescue
was hindered by the absence of a road to the site, which is surrounded
by farmland.
Survivor Marijke de Spa, 36, said there was no panic as the plane
turned back. ''Everything seemed normal, but as we came down the plane
veered to the right and dropped like a brick,'' she added.
Some reports said there may have been an explosion in the starboard
engine of the plane.
Gusting winds may have made the pilot lose control, one aerospace
expert said. Mr David Learmount, of aerospace industry journal Flight
International, said: ''It has emerged that the wind was very gusty and
squally, changing speed and direction quite quickly . . . in those
conditions if you don't get it exactly right things can go very wrong.''
A British couple were taken to Leiden University Hospital, 12 miles
from Schiphol. Duty surgeon John Delemare said John Cook, 69, and his
wife Valerie, 64, from Pontypridd, Mid Glamorgan, both suffered minor
injuries. Three other unnamed British men were also treated for minor
injuries at Slotervaart Hospital, outside Amsterdam.
The wreckage was cordoned off last night as Dutch crash investigators
began their inquiry. The aircraft's nose was destroyed and the fuselage
was virtually split in two.
More than 200 of the Saab 340s had been delivered within about 18
months of it first becoming available in 1989, and many more are on
order.
Holland endured its worst air disaster when, on October 4, 1992, 47
people died after an El Al Boeing 747 cargo jet crashed into two tower
blocks in an Amsterdam suburb.
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