Grieving relatives and medical staff today tried to identify the badly burned bodies of victims of the crash of a Spanish jet in which 153 people were killed as it took off on a holiday flight from Madrid airport.
The investigation into the crash, Spain's worst aviation disaster since 1983, got under way today with officials seeking to find out why the Spanair MD-82 jet aborted an initial take-off attempt shortly before the accident.
"The causes will have to be provided not only by the company but also by the black boxes, which compile all the flight data," Spain's Development minister Magdalena Alvarez said last night.
Relatives gathered at an improvised morgue in a convention centre to identify the bodies, many of which were badly burned.
Ms Alvarez said only 19 people of the 166 passengers and nine crew aboard survived. Spanair listed 157 passengers and 10 unnamed crew, implying a total of 167 aboard.
A Spanair spokesman said he could not account for the discrepancy between airline and government figures.
A passenger list published by Spanair, which is owned by Scandinavian Airlines Systems (SAS), showed mostly Spanish names but officials said there were also passengers from Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Chile. Many were children, rescue officials said.
Forensic scientists from around the country were heading to Madrid to help identify the bodies.
"We hope the very difficult and delicate task of identification can be done with the utmost efficiency," Ms Alvarez said. The plane was 15 years old and passed its annual inspection last year, she said.
Spanair Flight JK5022, bound for Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, was originally due to take off at 1pm. But after moving away from the terminal and approaching the runway it returned because of a mechanical problem, a source close to the situation said.
On its second take-off attempt, it shot off the runway, broke into pieces and burst into flames. Some survivors were flung from the plane by the force of the impact and landed in a stream.
Ms Alvarez said the cause of the accident seemed to be "an error in take-off". But a source close to the situation said the plane's left engine, made by Pratt & Whitney, had caught fire.
In Beijing, Spanish sailors Fernando Echavarri and Anton Paz wore black armbands when receiving gold medals for the Tornado in the Olympic Games today, after officials turned down a request to allow the Spanish flag to fly at half-mast.
Spanair has been struggling with high fuel prices and tough competition. Hours before the crash, pilots had threatened to strike in protest at proposed cuts in staff and routes.
SAS has been trying to sell Spanair since last year and its Spanish unit lost $81 million in the first half of the year.
The MD-82 is a medium-range single-aisle plane, popular with regional airlines. It is a member of the MD-80 family of planes made by US manufacturer Boeing.
American Airline's fleet of MD-80s came under scrutiny earlier this year, when the US Federal Aviation Administration ordered the carrier to ground some 300 of the planes to inspect wiring in the right wheel well, which it said could be a fire risk if not properly covered and secured.
Reuters