Madrid air disaster: Crash could be linked to rare engine fault

It is thought that the thrust reversers, normally only used just a plane touches down, were deployed on the Spanair MD-82 that burst into flames at Madrid airport yesterday 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.

"Automatic thrust reverser deployment will be one of the things that air crash investigators will be looking at," said Dr Guy Gratton of the school of engineering and design at Brunel University in west London.

Dr Gratton and other experts today outlined just what might have happened in the moments before the crash of the Spanair flight which was travelling to Las Palmas in Gran Canaria.

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, 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."

He added that the incident should have been "fairly survivable" and that everyone had survived when the British Airways Boeing 777 crash landed at Heathrow earlier this year.

Dr Gratton went on: "For this level of loss of life (at Madrid) however, the aircraft was presumably not under the level of control that an engine fire alone would probably cause."

Prof Ian Poll, head of the college of aeronautics at Cranfield University at Bedford, said: "If it is correct that the aircraft was 'taking off and skidded off the runway', then this sounds like an aborted takeoff. This could be due to a number of things including engine failure. However, it is a well practised event (in simulation) and aircrew are trained to respond to emergencies in the correct way.

"The rules of operation are such that a pilot must be able to abort a take-off while the aircraft is still on the ground and have enough runway left to come to a stop using maximum brakes. Maximum braking could be severe enough for brakes to catch fire and tyres to burst.

"However, the aircraft and its brakes are designed to cope with this situation. The brakes are anti-lock and anti-skid and the aircraft should travel in a straight line even under maximum braking."

Prof Bill Banks, president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and an aviation engineering expert, said: "The investigation should not rule out human error as well as any engineering fault. In engineering it can be deduced pretty quickly where the fault or problem stemmed from and rectified."

Kieran Daly, editor of internet news service Air Transport Intelligence, said today: "Take-off accidents are very, very rare.

You reach a point in take-off when it is unlikely that anything can go wrong but if things do go wrong, they can go wrong very quickly.

"On take-off, pilots reach a point of no return, known as V1 speed, which is usually reached about two seconds before take-off.

"If you go above V1 and abort the take-off, there is insufficient room at the end of the runway and there is the chance of going off the end of the runway at a very fast speed and things can then go very badly wrong."

Mr Daly went on: "The normal rule is that if you go beyond V1 and something goes wrong, you take off anyway. If, for example, a tyre blew, you would take off.

"A problem at the point of take-off is very challenging for the pilot. If something happens at the point of V1, he is committed to taking off.

"If there is an engine failure at this point, he is flying an aircraft at very low speed."

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

She said: "Philip joins me in sending our warm and heartfelt sympathies to the families and friends of those who have died and our best wishes for a speedy recovery to those who have been injured.

"At this difficult time all those affected by this tragedy are in our thoughts and prayers."

In a statement given yesterday, a Downing Street spokesman said: "The Prime Minister was deeply sorry to hear about today's tragedy in Spain.

"His thoughts are with the Spanish people and all those affected by the tragedy."