Turkish Airlines Flight 981 - Accident

Accident

Flight 981 had flown from Istanbul that morning, landing at Paris's Orly International Airport just after 11:00 am local time. The aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, was carrying just 167 passengers and 13 crew members in its first leg. 50 passengers disembarked at Paris. The flight's second leg, from Paris to London's Heathrow Airport, was normally underbooked, but due to a strike by BEA employees, many London-bound travelers who had been stranded at Orly were booked onto Flight 981. Among them were 17 English rugby players who had attended a France-England match the previous day; the flight also carried six British fashion models, and 48 Japanese bank management trainees on their way to England, as well as passengers from a dozen other countries.

The aircraft departed Orly at around 12:30 pm for its flight to Heathrow. It took off in an easterly direction, then turned to the north to avoid flying directly over Paris. Shortly thereafter the flight was cleared to flight level 230, and started turning to the west for London. Just after Flight 981 passed over the town of Meaux, controllers picked up a distorted transmission from the plane; the aircraft's pressurization and overspeed warnings were heard over the pilots' words in Turkish, including the co-pilot saying "the fuselage has burst." The flight disappeared from radar shortly afterwards.

Its wreckage was later found in the Ermenonville Forest, a state-owned forest at Bosque de Dammartin, in the commune of Fontaine-Chaalis, Oise. 6 passengers had been ejected over Saint-Pathus.

The aircraft had disintegrated. The post-crash fires were small as there were few large pieces of the aircraft left intact to burn. Of the 346 on board, only 40 bodies were visually identifiable. Nine passengers were never identified.