FACTBOX: Details of Amsterdam crash plane
(Reuters) - A Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 jetliner with 135 people aboard crashed in light fog while trying to land at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on Wednesday, killing nine, a local official said.
Here are some details of the type of plane involved:
DESCRIPTION
The Boeing 737-800 is one of the most recent variants of the 737, a family of single-aisle aircraft in service since 1968 and often described as the workhorse of short- and medium-haul aviation alongside the competing Airbus A320 series.
The 737-800 is part of the second or "next" generation of 737s in production since the 1990s. It entered service in 1998.
Turkish Airlines was one of its early customers and has taken delivery of a total of 49 directly from Boeing, according to the Chicago-based planemaker's website.
AIRCRAFT DETAILS
Passenger capacity (typical 2-class) 162
(1-class) 189
Flight crew 2
Length 129 feet 6 inches
Wing span (with winglets, see below) 117 ft 5 in
Interior cabin width 11 ft 7 in
Emergency exits: 8 (2 in the front, 4 in the middle, 2 in the back)
Range 3,060 nautical miles/5,665 kilometers
Engines Two CFM56-7 engines
(Engines made by CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric Aviation of the United States and Snecma, a unit of French conglomerate Safran.)
PRODUCTION
First delivery 1998
Boeing has built a total of 1,525 737-800s for airlines.
A further 1,490 remain on order plus a handful for VIP use.
The Boeing list price for a new aircraft is $66-75 million
As in the case of the Turkish plane, the 737-800 can be sold with distinctive "winglets." Experts say these upward-slanting wing-tip extensions save fuel, thus extending range, by improving the distribution of lift over the surface of the wing.
AIRCRAFT SAFETY RECORD
The Amsterdam crash is the third fatal accident involving the Boeing 737-800, according to the Flight Safety Foundation (www.aviation-safety.net).
In 2006 a Gol-operated 737-800 collided in mid-air with a business jet, killing 154 people, and in 2007 a Kenya Airways nose-dived into the ground shortly after take-off at Douala airport in Cameroon, costing 114 lives.
AIRLINE SAFETY RECORD
Turkish Airlines had a troublesome safety record in the 1970s, with 608 lives lost in around two years, but the modern airline's safety performance has improved significantly and Wednesday's crash was its second fatal incident this decade, according to the Flight Safety Foundation.
Eighty people were killed when a Turkish airlines Avro RJ 100 crashed almost a kilometer short of the runway in fog at Diyarbakir Airport in Turkey in 2003, according to the website.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Giles Elgood)
