Airliner Crashes in East Berlin; 17 Killed : East German Jet With 113 Aboard Aborts Takeoff, Plows Into Field

A Moscow-bound East German airliner carrying 113 people overshot the runway in an aborted takeoff at Schoenefeld airport here Saturday and crashed and burned, killing 17 people, the official news agency ADN reported.

The Soviet-built Ilyushin-62 apparently failed to reach an adequate speed to get off the ground, East German television said. ADN said the pilot aborted the takeoff because of “technical reasons” but did not provide details.

The plane, which belonged to East Germany’s state airline Interflug, was carrying 103 passengers and a crew of 10. Rescue workers praised the passengers for remaining calm and said the lack of panic helped 50 people escape without injury.

The remaining survivors suffered injuries of varying severity. Many were picked up by witnesses and taken by private cars to hospitals.

Most of the passengers were East Germans. The plane also carried 11 Soviet citizens, two Italians, two Poles and one Nepalese, officials said.

East German television reported that as the plane attempted to take off, its nose rose off the ground but then dropped, and the pilot unsuccessfully applied the brakes. The plane plowed through crash barriers into a cornfield and stopped about 500 yards from the runway, where it exploded and burst into flames.

“The plane accelerated strongly, and we felt the nose lift off. Suddenly the aircraft braked, it went slower, and there was strong shaking and a jerk. Then the plane broke apart suddenly in front of our seats,” passenger Renate Lazer, who was sitting in the seventh row with her husband Ingolf and their two sons, told ADN.

The family climbed to safety through a hole in the plane, she said.

Many of the other passengers escaped in similar fashion before the jet’s fuel tanks ignited, engulfing the wreckage in flames.

Among the survivors was 2-month-old Benjamin Vonstein.

“It was really dreadful,” said a woman who had been picking carrots in another field nearby. “We saw the plane go up in flames. We ran, just ran to get away.”

The wreckage lay blackened in the cornfield, the tail broken off and the cockpit twisted to one side. Virtually nothing remained of the fuselage and the interior except for charred seats and piles of East German newspapers.

About 200 firefighters poured foam on the plane for more than an hour to extinguish the blaze after the accident, which occurred shortly after 8:30 a.m.

Quick action by the rescue workers prevented the fuel tanks in the right wing, which had remained intact, from catching fire, authorities said.

The flight recorder was found, and the East German government said it had launched an investigation into the cause of the crash.

The last known air accident in East Germany was in December, 1986, when 72 people died in a crash of a Soviet plane that was approaching Schoenefeld.

East German Transport Minister Otto Arndt told a news conference that all 11 of Interflug’s remaining IL-62s had been grounded until the investigation of the crash is completed.