Doomed flight to Prestwick

Published on Friday 3 February 2006 01:19

AIRCRAFT crashes are rare, but when they do happen they are devastating. When the Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) plane Nijmegen crashed into an Ayrshire field on 20 October 1948 the death toll was horrific.

The plane – a four-engine Lockheed Constellation – was scheduled to fly from Amsterdam to New York with a refuelling stop at Prestwick Airport, south of Glasgow. Extra cargo was loaded in Amsterdam for routing to Iceland, delaying the flight by 41 minutes. It is likely that during this delay Koened Parmentier, the lead pilot, missed a weather update about low-lying cloud.

The plane left Schiphol Airport at 9.11pm and crossed the North Sea before flying up England without a problem. The pilots established radio communication with the Prestwick control tower and made their descent into western Scotland.

The night sky was foggy and landing visibility was deteriorating because of the increasing cloud cover. The plane was guided to the airport by ground radar. The pilots were talked down to visual range and then contact was broken as normal.

On its final approach to runway 32 the aircraft suddenly aborted, rose quickly and banked away. The pilot lifted the plane and gained altitude and, according to The Scotsman newspaper account, narrowly missed the tower in the process.

Parmentier told the tower he had reservations about landing on this runway because of strong crosswinds. Instead he decided it was safer to land on runway 26, as agreed with the control tower.

The Constellation headed in a southerly direction, completing a circuit that would align the craft for landing. The second attempt would be more complicated, as runway 26 wasn't equipped with ground radar and the pilots would require visual confirmation.

The co-pilot told the tower "Yes, I am visual", however the plane must have flown into a bank of low-level cloud. With this murky view before them, the pilots didn't see what was coming towards the aircraft.

About 3 1/2 miles from the runway, at about 11.34pm, the plane flew straight into high-tension electricity cables. The crew communicated to the tower: "We have hit something…Fire Control…We are climbing", followed by, "Have you any idea where we are?".

The plane, now on fire, turned and headed east. It circled over the village of Tarbolton near Prestwick, made two circuits at low altitude turned steeply then disappeared.

There was a bang and a flash. "The whole place lit up," said eyewitness Constable William Halliday.

The plane hit the crest of a ploughed field, tore its way across a farm road and into a grass field at Auchenweet Farm, five miles north-east of the airport. It missed a farmhouse by 100 yards and was burning heavily.

Much of the Lockheed aircraft disintegrated, leaving only the tail intact and the remains of the metal shell twisted and torn further up the field.

Passengers' bodies lay amongst the wreckage. The body of a crewmember was discovered about a third of a mile away, having apparently jumped out of the plane. The landscape was littered with debris, flames and the remains of personal effects.

Emergency crews from the area converged on the crash site. Rescue work was done by torchlight with pockets of burning oil shedding extra light on the tragic scene.

Astonishingly about 5,000 worth of diamonds - valued at over 119,000 by today's standards - were found near the wreckage. A twisted and soiled copy of the Army Air Forces Pilot's Handbook was also recovered. The handbook contains airport approach charts for the North Atlantic. The index pointed to two charts relating to Prestwick Airport - both missing from the handbook but likely the two burnt pages found at the crash site.

Six survivors were taken to hospital suffering from severe burns and shock. Five died the next day. The last survivor, Dutchman W H Phillippo, suffering from burns, lacerations and shock, died four days after the crash.

The accident investigation report, published a year later by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, said that a coincidence of "a number of adverse circumstances" were to blame for the crash, amongst them weather conditions and incorrect information.

The KLM approach and landing charts displayed a spot height near the electricity pylon as 45 feet high. In fact, it was 434 feet high. The elevation north-east from runway 26 was also incorrect, possibly explaining why the plane was so close to the ground as it circled Tarbolton.

In all, 30 passengers and 10 crew died in the accident. The victims included a baby, former members of the Royal Air Force and Prince Alfred of Honenlohe, Austria.

At the time it was the highest number of fatalities Scotland experienced in a civil aviation disaster - but sadly not the last time such an event would occur.

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