NLM CityHopper Flight 431 refers to a Fokker F-28-4000, registration PH-CHI, that was due to operate an international scheduled

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

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Eindhoven Eindhoven ( ; ) is a city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, located in the southern Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Brabant, of which it is the largest municipality, and is also locat ...

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Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

passenger service. On 6 October 1981, the aircraft encountered a

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with the surface of Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, although the ...

on the first leg, minutes after taking off from Rotterdam Airport, and crashed south-southeast of Rotterdam. All 17 occupants of the aircraft – 13 passengers and 4 crew members– died in the accident.

Aircraft and crew

The aircraft involved in the accident was a

Fokker F28-4000 The Fokker F28 Fellowship is a twin-engined, short-range jet airliner designed and built by Netherlands, Dutch aircraft manufacturer Fokker. Following the Fokker F27 Friendship, an early and commercially successful turboprop-powered regional air ...

, registration PH-CHI, that was built in 1979 with c/n 11141. At the time of the accident, the airframe had accumulated 4,485 flight hours and 5,997 cycles. The captain was 33-year-old Jozef Werner, who had been with NLM CityHopper for nearly 11 years. He had 4,900 flight hours, including 309 hours on the Fokker F28. The first officer was 28-year-old Hendrik Schoorl, who had been with the airline for three years and had 2,971 flight hours, with 2,688 of them on the Fokker F28.

Description of the accident

During the weather briefing 44 minutes before takeoff, the crew was apprised to an area of strong

thunderstorm A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustics, acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorm ...

s with 3/8 (37.5%) sky coverage of

cumulonimbus Cumulonimbus () is a dense, towering, vertical cloud, typically forming from water vapor condensing in the lower troposphere that builds upward carried by powerful buoyant air currents. Above the lower portions of the cumulonimbus the water va ...

at a base of , south-southwest winds strong, and visibility at Rotterdam Airport . The aircraft took off at 17:04

CET CET or cet may refer to: Places * Cet, Albania * Cet, standard astronomical abbreviation for the constellation Cetus * Colchester Town railway station (National Rail code CET), in Colchester, England Arts, entertainment, and media * Comcast En ...

(UTC +1) from RTM. The crew noted heavy rain in thunderstorms on the airplane's weather avoidance radar at 17:09, receiving clearance to avoid the area. At 17:12 the aircraft entered a

while flying through clouds. The weather system the aircraft entered into was apparently the same "tornado-like" system that

Zeeland Zeeland (; ), historically known in English by the Endonym and exonym, exonym Zealand, is the westernmost and least populous province of the Netherlands. The province, located in the southwest of the country, borders North Brabant to the east ...

locals described as being responsible for considerable property damage. Meteorologically, these vortices are indeed tornadoes, and the disintegrating airliner was seen exiting cloud cover. A police officer first photographed the tornado, then smoke from the burning plane a few minutes later. An investigation concluded that a sharp increase in altitude registered on the altimeter was not a change in altitude, rather a pressure drop associated with the tornado. Stresses experienced by the airframe owing to severe turbulence resulted in loads of +6.8 ''g'' and −3.2 ''g'' causing the starboard wing to detach. The aircraft was designed for a maximum G-load of up to 4 g. The aircraft

spun ''Spun'' is a 2002 American black comedy crime drama film directed by Jonas Åkerlund from an original screenplay by William De Los Santos and Creighton Vero, based on three days of De Los Santos's life in the Eugene, Oregon drug subculture. I ...

down into the ground from , crashing some from a

Shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses Science Biology * Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...

chemical plant on the southeastern outskirts of

Moerdijk Moerdijk () is a municipality and a town in the South of the Netherlands, in the province of North Brabant. History The municipality of Moerdijk was founded in 1997 following the merger of the municipalities of Fijnaart en Heijningen, Klunde ...

. All 17 occupants of the aircraft perished in the accident. While observing the unfolding incident from the ground, a firefighter suffered a fatal

cardiac arrest Cardiac arrest (also known as sudden cardiac arrest CA is when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. When the heart stops beating, blood cannot properly Circulatory system, circulate around the body and the blood flow to the ...

References

External links

Accident details
a
planecrashinfo.com
{{Aviation accidents and incidents in 1981 Airliner accidents and incidents caused by in-flight structural failure Airliner accidents and incidents caused by weather Aviation accidents and incidents in the Netherlands Aviation accidents and incidents in 1981 Accidents and incidents involving the Fokker F28 NLM CityHopper accidents and incidents 1981 meteorology Deaths in tornadoes History of North Brabant Moerdijk October 1981 in Europe

Aircraft and crew

Description of the accident

See also

References

External links