It has been 50 years since 346 people plummeted to their death after a plane’s cargo door ripped open causing catastrophic engine failure.
On March 3, 1974, Turkish Airlines Flight 981’s cabin was full of passengers after strikes meant everyone rushed to book tickets for the few available journeys.
This included 177 Brits who were returning to London following their trip abroad.
But just minutes after the plane took off from its scheduled stop at Orly airport in Paris, the cargo door of the DC-10 aircraft was suddenly torn off.
In the space of just 77 seconds, everyone on board the flight was dead.
What caused the crash?
The loss of the cargo door resulted in a huge pressurization different from the passenger cabin right above.
Six passengers sat directly above the hold and were ripped out along with a section of the aircraft.
Captain Berköz and First Officer Ulusman also lost control of the plane after access to one of the engines, the rudder and the elevator were all cut off.
The plane began to turn 20 degrees downwards into a nose dive, picking up speed as it got closer to the ground and eventually falling at 783 km per hour.
Despite the efforts of the pilots, attempts to pull the nose up failed, and the plane crashed into the Ermenoville Forest and split into thousands of pieces.
It was discovered the cargo door’s hinge ripped off as the hinge had not moved into the correct position and the locking pins were not in place.
There were no engineers on the ground at Orly airport, leaving baggage handler Mohammed Mahmoudi to close the door.
After he followed the basic procedure and closed the door, the warning light in the cabin was switched off, but this was a false indicator.
Who was killed in the disaster?
Identifying the victims and collecting evidence became incredibly challenging as emergency services and crash investigators combed the forest for all the missing pieces.
The passenger list included an amateur rugby team from Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, who were on returning from watching the then-Five Nations in France.
Olympian John Cooper, who won silver medals in the hurdles and relay at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 was also on board.
What was the aftermath of the crash?
For over a decade, the disaster was the deadliest single aircraft crash until the crash of Japan Airlines flight 123.
It remains the sixth deadliest aviation disaster.
The families of the 346 victims all filed a lawsuit against the aircraft manufacturer McDonnell-Douglas, making it one of the largest lawsuits in history.
The investigation found they aircraft company knew about the design flaws, after a plane with a similar error exploded during a test take off four years before.
One of the aircraft’s manufacturers sent a memo to McDonnell-Douglas saying if a plane takes off with the fault, it will result in the loss of the aircraft.
But nothing was done to correct the flaw.
Turkish Airlines was also found to be at fault as they failed to station an engineer on the ground.
They also reportedly rushed the training process for staff working with DC-10 aircraft’s.
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