A large cargo plane crashed at the end of a runway and split in two while trying to take off Sunday at Brussels airport, authorities said.
Four of the five crew members on board the Boeing 747 were slightly injured, said Francis Vermeiren, mayor of the nearby town of Zaventem. The mayor was coordinating rescue efforts after the crash.
“The plane is not on fire but it has split into two,” he told VRT radio.
Firefighters were coating the wings of the plane with special fire retardant foam as a precaution because the plane was still full of jet fuel, the mayor said.
He said the plane was on a scheduled flight to Bahrain. It was not known what cargo the plane was carrying.
The plane came to a halt at the end of a runway, near houses and a cemetery.
Vermeiren said the pilot told rescue authorities he heard a large noise while trying to take off just after midday. It was not yet clear what caused the crash.
The plane is owned by Kalitta Air, a cargo carrier based in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
If I’m following this correctly, the plane was rolling down the runway attempting to get up enough speed to lift off when the pilot heard a “large noise”, presumably the plane breaking up. This wasn’t an aborted take off where they blew past the runway after aborting and then bouncing over the unpaved ground caused the break up. Correct? If so then, these guys seem to be damn lucky a nice bit of turbulence didn’t do this once they were airborne. When was the last time the plane was checked for structural defects? 1988?
Wild guess here, the 2003 A/W renewal may be when Kalitta bought it and drug it out of the desert.
Cargo aircraft are on the same maintenance schedule as any other aircraft of the same make/model. They do get checked more than once every couple of years! Lighter maintenance is done more often than heavy checks. Pulling the interior out would only take place every 3 or 4 years at the most.
I haven’t heard for sure what the noise was yet. The airplane coming apart would be down the list of likely candidates though, engine coming apart, compressor stall, tire(s) blowing, cargo shifting would all be more common.
It’s hard to tell in the pictures, but it looks possible that it is still up on the landing gear with the break coming over/aft of the wing. If so, that is rather miraculous in it’s own right but would explain why there was no fire.
