Families of air crash victims search through burnt bodies for loved ones

Officials at Spanair, the flight operator, declined to comment on possible causes, but said flight JK5022 had been delayed before the crash because of an aborted take-off.

The first failure to get off the ground was due to a problem with the heating system of the plane's air intake.

The airliner crashed, broke up and burst into flames just after take-off at about 2:30pm local time on Wednesday.

The Spanish Commercial Pilots' Association said the incident, which claimed 153 lives, must have been due to factors more serious than just engine failure.

As Spain declared three days of mourning, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia consoled grieving relatives grouped in an airport salon. The royal couple hugged the weeping families of the dead.

Several had just gone through the ordeal of identifying the bodies of their loved ones in a temporary mortuary set up at an exhibition centre a few miles from the crash scene.

The same hall was used as a mortuary for the 191 killed when terrorists detonated explosives on four commuter trains in the Madrid massacre of 11 March, 2004.

It could take several days to complete the process of identifying the dead from the plane crash, as many of the victims were burned beyond recognition and forensic teams are having to use DNA testing.

One distraught relative said: "Knowing the (flight number of the] plane was bad, it took off with my seven-year-old niece."

Spanair's website, which published the names of passengers but not their nationalities, said 20 were children and two were babies. The airline said the plane was carrying 172 passengers and crew. Only 19 survived as they were flung into a stream by the crash and avoided severe burns.

Yesterday, the Foreign Office said it was not aware of any British nationals involved.

Magdalena Alvarez, Spain's development minister, said the cause of the accident seemed to be "an error in take-off".

However, Spanish media and a source close to the situation said the left engine, made by US manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, had caught fire.

Ligia Palomino, who survived the crash, said: "(Technicians] supposedly fixed the problem, which the pilot said was with the air-conditioning, and then we took off.

"The plane was wobbling from one side to another. Then I began to suspect we would crash. I don't know what happened next. I was in a sort of river and saw people, smoke, explosions – which I think woke me up."

Ms Alvarez said there were 19 passengers in hospital. Two were critical, 12 very serious, three serious and two with only minor injuries.

Spanair admitted that a valve on the plane – an MD-82 which was heading for Gran Canaria – had overheated before a first attempt at take-off, but it was not clear if this had anything to do with the crash.

Javier Mendoza, a spokesman for Spanair, said the device – an air-intake probe under the cockpit – was reporting problems.

He said technicians corrected the problem by "de-energising" it, or turning it off. Spanair said that the plane was cleared by company technicians after the problem was fixed.

The company also confirmed that an MD-82 was forced to make an emergency landing last Saturday on a flight from Lanzarote in the Canary Islands to Madrid, because of problems with both engines.

The plane landed in the nearby island of Gran Canaria, the destination of Wednesday's doomed flight.

A company official said he did not know if the same plane was involved in both cases. The firm has eight remaining MD-82s.

In a message to King Juan Carlos, the Queen said she was "deeply saddened to learn of the dreadful loss of life" in the disaster.

Experts point finger at same cause as Thailand disaster

THE Spanish air crash could have been caused by the same rare problem that led to an aircraft accident 17 years ago that killed 223 people, it was claimed yesterday.

However, experts said it could take up to a year to determine properly what had happened.

Dr Guy Gratton, of the school of engineering and design at Brunel University in west London, said investigators would be looking at thrust reversers.

It is believed that the parts, normally only used just as a plane touches down, were deployed on the Spanair MD-82 that burst into flames at Madrid Airport with the loss of more than 150 lives.

In May 1991, a Lauda Air Boeing 767 crashed in Thailand with the loss of 223 lives when the thrust reverser automatically went into operation.

Dr Gratton said: "The plane would have been designed to continue its climb if an engine failed on take-off, and pilots are certainly trained to cope with this. But the hotter the weather is, the harder it is for a plane to climb.

"Conditions at Madrid would certainly have been hot, which degrades both aircraft performance and engine power, so may have reduced the aeroplane's ability to climb. This may have caused the ground impact and subsequent fire."

Professor Ian Poll, the head of the college of aeronautics at Cranfield University, Bedford, said: "If it is correct that the aircraft was 'taking off and skidded off the runway', this sounds like an aborted take-off.

"This could be due to a number of things, including engine failure. However, it is a well-practised event (in simulation] and air crew are trained to respond to emergencies in the correct way."

The Spanish commercial pilots' association's security director claimed there must have been "something very seriously wrong". Francisco Cruz said: "It points to other failures in the aircraft's systems. It is not logical that an engine failure caused this aircraft to crash. There must have been something more. This possibility could correspond with a major problem in the hydraulic or electrical systems."

He said that it would take up to a year to find the fault.