EL AL Israel Flight 1862 'Amsterdam Crash'

On 4 October 1992, El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747 cargo plane of the state-run Israeli airline El Al, crashed into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer (colloquially "Bijlmer") neighbourhood (part of Amsterdam-Zuidoost) of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. For the location in the Bijlmermeer, the crash is known in Dutch as the "Bijlmerramp" (or Bijlmer disaster). A total of 43 people were killed, including the plane's crew of three, a non-revenue passenger in a jump seat, and 39 people on the ground. Many more were injured. This accident remains the deadliest aviation accident to ever occur in The Netherlands (though not the deadliest accident involving Dutch people, a distinction that belongs to the Tenerife airport disaster). The disaster was made worse by the large fire that resulted from the crash.

Flight 1862 was scheduled to depart at 5:30 pm, but the flight was delayed until 6:20 pm. At 6:22 pm, Flight 1862 departed from runway 01L on a northerly heading. Once airborne, the aircraft turned to the right on its departure route. Soon after the turn, at 6:27 pm, above the Gooimeer, a lake near Amsterdam, a sharp bang was heard while the aircraft was climbing through 1950 meters (6500 feet). The bang was the result of the two fuse pins attaching engine three to the right wing failing due to microscopic fatigue cracks. The engine separated from the right wing of the aircraft, shot forward, damaged the wing flaps, then fell back and struck engine number four, tearing it from the wing. The two engines fell away from the aircraft, also ripping out a 9-meter (30-foot) stretch of the wing's leading edge. The loud noise attracted the attention of some pleasure boaters on Gooimeer. The boaters notified the Netherlands Coastguard of two objects they had seen falling from the sky. One boater, a police officer, said he initially thought the two falling objects were parachutists, but as they fell closer he could see they were both plane engines.

The captain made a mayday call to air traffic control (ATC) and indicated that he wanted to return to Schiphol. At 6:28:45 pm, the captain reported: "El Al 1862, lost number three and number four engine, number three and number four engine." ATC and the flight crew did not yet grasp the severity of the situation. Although the flight crew knew they had lost power from the engines, they did not see that the engines had completely broken off and that the wing had been damaged. The outboard engine on the wing of a 747 is visible from the cockpit only with difficulty and the inboard engine on the wing is not visible at all. Given the choices that the captain and crew made following the loss of engine power, the Dutch parliamentary inquiry commission that later studied the crash concluded that the crew did not know that both engines had broken away from the right wing.

At 6:35:25 pm, the first officer radioed to ATC: "Going down, 1862, going down, going down, copied, going down." In the background, the captain was heard instructing the first officer in Hebrew to raise the flaps and lower the landing gear.