37 Die as Jet Falls Short of British Runway

In the second major air disaster here in less than three weeks, a British Midland Airways flight from London to Belfast undershot the runway during an attempted emergency landing in central England on Sunday night, killing at least 37 people and injuring nearly 90 others, some critically.

The Boeing 737 disappeared from ground control radar about 110 miles northwest of London, minutes after the pilot reported “severe vibration in one of the engines,” said British Midland’s chairman, Michael Bishop. The plane crashed about half a mile short of the runway at Britain’s East Midlands Airport, the nation’s 11th largest.

Eyewitnesses on the ground reported seeing the aircraft’s left engine on fire just before it smashed onto the embankment of the country’s main north-south highway, the M-1, and broke up.

Eyewitness Peter Wragg from nearby Kegworth described “a lot of noise, as if it was a backfire. Flames coming out of the port engine. Very much nose-up and wing-down on the port side, as if (the pilot) was struggling for height.”

There were later reports that the burning engine was the second to malfunction on the two-engine aircraft and that the first had already been shut down.

Airport officials later said that the pilot had reported an engine fire but told the control tower that it was under control.

As it came down, the plane passed only 50 feet over the highest buildings in the town of Kegworth, about half a mile east of the crash site.

The plane broke up into three sections, but the number of fatalities was apparently limited by the fact that the engine fire did not spread when the plane crashed. Although the wing tanks were still full of fuel when rescue workers arrived on the scene and smoke arose from the wreckage, there was little fire.

There was no immediate explanation for the engine failure on an airplane that Bishop said had fewer than 500 hours of flying time.

“It’s a brand new airplane,” he said. “It was delivered from the manufacturers less than 12 weeks ago, and it is the very latest technology Boeing 737”--a model known as the 737-400.

On Dec. 21, a Pan American World Airways jumbo jet was brought down by a saboteur’s bomb over Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and crew on board as well as 11 residents of the village of Lockerbie in Britain’s worst airline disaster. An international inquiry involving authorities in West Germany, Britain and the United States has so far failed to pin down those responsible for planting the bomb or the means by which the device was smuggled on board the New York-bound Flight 103.

Question of Sabotage

The fact that Sunday’s British Midland Flight 092 was headed for strife-torn Northern Ireland also raised the question of sabotage. But Bishop told The Times in an interview that “there is no indication of anything like this at this stage. The beginning of the incident stems from an engine failure.”

However, the reports that both engines on the nearly new aircraft had malfunctioned fueled suspicions that they may have been tampered with. It would be “foolish to rule it (sabotage) out at this stage,” said David Learmount, air transport editor for Flight International Magazine, in a British Broadcasting Corp. television interview.

Chairman Bishop, speaking by telephone from the company’s headquarters in Darby, about 7 miles from the crash site, added that “the cockpit crew has survived, and they are now being cut out of the wreckage.” News reports said the pilot and co-pilot were pulled out alive about three hours after the crash.

Flight 092 was reported to have carried 117 passengers and eight crew members.

All-Night Rescue Efforts

Rescue efforts continued all night. The last survivor was removed from the wreckage at 3:30 a.m., the fire chief at the scene said.

A film shot by an amateur cameraman at the scene within minutes of the crash showed firefighters and ambulance workers struggling to free passengers trapped inside the tail section. Some people were carried away on stretchers, while others, clearly dazed, were led walking to emergency vehicles on hand to take them to nearby hospitals.

About 100 firemen from three counties and 30 ambulances were reported at the site.

The crash closed the divided M-1, which was strewn with wreckage. The highway is about half a mile east of the East Midlands Airport.

There were reports of some minor damage to vehicles on the M-1, but no casualties despite the fact that the highway is usually crowded on Sunday nights with Londoners returning home from weekends in the country.

Sheared Trees as It Fell

Another witness, Desmond Anderson, told Independent Radio News that while the aircraft was “pretty low . . . it looked as if it might possibly make the runway.” It sheared trees in its path as it fell short.

In August, 1985, another Boeing 737, this one flown by British Airways, crashed after an engine fire at Manchester Airport, killing 55 passengers and crew. Aviation experts here said that the 737-400 that crashed Sunday uses a different engine from the type that was on the Manchester plane.

The newer engine has “one of the most brilliant safety records in the world today,” said magazine editor Learmount.

Pilots flying 737s are trained on simulators to handle the aircraft on a single engine in case of emergency. Said Learmount: “It’s obvious that this was more than just a simple engine failure, because otherwise the pilot would have gotten the airplane down safely.”

British Midland is the country’s second-largest scheduled domestic carrier after the giant British Airways. Bishop said Sunday’s crash was the carrier’s first fatal accident in the last 35 years of scheduled flying.