Spanair Plane Crash
A Spanair flight bound for the Canary Islands airport of Las Palmas carrying 172 people on board crashed shortly after take off from the Barajas airport in Madrid, leaving 153 passengers dead.
Reports suggest that a fire broke out in one of the MD82 aircrafts engines during or shortly after take-off.
Accident investigators are now examining the wreckage and will start to analyse the plane's black box, which has been recovered from the debris, to determine the cause of the crash.
The Spanish Minister for Transport Magdalena Alvarez stated the plane had to abort an earlier take off attempt because of a technical problem which then caused a one hour delay in the ill-fated take-off.
A review of safety was conducted earlier this year on the MD-80 series fleet resulted in American Airlines grounding their entire fleet of MD-80's. This resulted in almost 6000 flights being cancelled as the hydraulic wiring in the aircrafts was checked.
Delta Airlines also had to cancel 275 flights after a safety audit on their MD-80 fleet. Investigations show that almost 400 people have been killed in the last 5 years in incidents involving MD-80 series aircraft.
Clive Garner, an Aviation law expert from Irwin Mitchell solicitors, said: "Having acted for the victims of previous crashes involving MD-80, and other aircraft, it is dreadful to see another terrible crash of this kind. There were ominous warning signs leading up to this incident that may suggest this tragic loss of life could have been avoided. It is now up to the Spanish Civil Aviation Authorities to undertake a full investigation into the cause of this tragedy.
"Whilst statistically air travel remains one of the safest forms of transport, when an incident like this occurs lessons must be learnt. It is obviously vital that all airlines adhere to the strictest standards which are never compromised by putting budgets before passenger safety."