Monday, August 25, 2008
Update on the Spanair crash in Madrid
A huge four-figure spike of visitors to this site on Wednesday and many more since then, came looking for information about the Tenerife Disaster (the 1977 crash at Tenerife's Los Rodeos airport), in the wake of Wednesday's crash in Madrid of the Spanair flight bound for Gran Canaria.
Wednesday's crash 
sadly claimed its 154th victim Saturday, when a 31 year old woman died. She had suffered 72% burns. Another 2 of the remaining 18 survivors, currently in Madrid hospitals are in a very serious condition.
Among the dead are complete families, people from almost every region of Spain and from 11 foreign countries; Bulgaria, Sweden, Italy, Colombia, Germany, France, Brazil, Mauritania, Turkey, Gambia and Indonesia.
Around half the passengers were resident in the Canary Islands.
Clearly, there's no connection to link the two accidents and, even if this does make the list of worst crashes in Europe and whatever else the media is dragging up to make a headline, it isn't quite the "Holiday Horror" as portrayed on British TV, but the less said about my hatred of the British media's sensationalist approach, the better.
The current hypothesis over the cause of the crash is that, for whatever reason (that the accident investigation will seek to determine), the aircraft did not have enough power to lift off, but had passed the point of no return.
Photo: 2007/10/10 EC-HFP, by wicho «Sunbreeze» about to land at Barajas airport in Madrid. Sadly, this plane crashed on take off from Barajas on August 20th 2008 as JKK 5022 / LH 2554 to Gran Canaria airport (LPA). By the time of the crash, it had been repainted with the Star Alliance livery.
In memoriam by alexgg.
