A Spanair plane bound for the Canary Islands from Madrid caught fire after skidding off the runway killing 147 people; 173 were on board — 26 are known to have survived.
The plane was delayed for an hour because of technical reasons and when it finally tried to take-off from Terminal 4 of Barajas International Airport, it hardly got off the ground before it swerved off the runway as its engine caught fire and blew-up into flames. This happened around 2:30pm this afternoon (Spain time).
“The plane was totally broken apart, it was all full of bodies,” one of the witnesses told El Pais newspaper (as reported by Sky News).
You can see a video post accident here on Spain’s National newspaper El Pais, unfortunately the commentary is in Spanish.
Before the crash, Spanair pilots threatened to strike after they heard of plans to cut the airline’s workforce by 1000 people.
Spanair is one of Spain’s national airlines — the second largest after Iberia, and owned by the Scandinavian SAS Group.