New Video Shows Plane in Madrid Crash Barely Lifting Off
Friday, September 19, 2008
Reuters/ElPais.com
A video grab released Sept. 18, 2008 shows a cloud of smoke rising at the end of a runway as Spanair flight JK5022 crashed on takeoff.
A video grab released Sept. 18, 2008 shows a cloud of smoke rising at the end of a runway as Spanair flight JK5022 crashed on takeoff.
MADRID, Spain — Airport security video of last month's plane crash in Madrid shows the aircraft just barely getting off the ground, then skidding and erupting in a ball of fire and column of black smoke.
In one grainy minute of footage taken from a distance and released Thursday on the Web site of the newspaper El Pais, the plane's nose appears to rise at a sharp angle as it struggles to get off the ground.
The Spanair MD-82 then skids for some distance and disappears off the side of the runway. Investigators have said that at that point it careened down the first of several embankments beside the runway at Madrid's Barajas airport.
The video then shows a big ball of fire and a towering column of smoke.
El Pais said the footage came from AENA, the government agency that runs Spain's airports.
The Aug. 20 crash of the plane flying from Madrid to the Canary Islands killed 154 of the 172 people on the plane.
A preliminary report by crash investigators said the plane tried to take off without deploying its wing flaps — which provide extra lift — and the pilots were unaware because a cockpit alarm system that is supposed to warn of such a problem failed to go off.
