Turkish Airlines names four dead crew members

The company said in the statement that the identities of the victims have been determined but did not give any names except its dead staff.

Earlier on Friday, the head of an aviation union said two hostesses aboard the plane were seriously injured.

One of the legs of seriously injured hostess Figen Eren has been amputated, the chairman of Hava-Is union, Atilay Aycin, told a press conference in Istanbul. However later on Friday a relative of Eren called hurriyet.com.tr to confirm she was injured but denied the reports that her leg was amputated.

Hostess Perihan Ozden, who was also seriously injured, has several badly broken bones as a result of the accident, he added. A third hostess, Yasemin Vural, survived the accident with only minor injuries, Aycin said.

Three Turkish nationals, who were injured in the crash, were brought to Istanbul on Friday. The injured Turks have been identified as Necati Arman, Unal Onur and Hakan Mercan.

BOEING EMPLOYEES KILLED

Several other survivors arrived in Turkey on Thursday.

Flight TK-1951 from Istanbul crashed about one mile (1.5 kilometers) short of the runway at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on Wednesday morning, smashing into three pieces and spraying luggage and debris across a field.

Haarlemmermeer mayor Theo Weterings said Thursday five Turks and four Americans were killed in the crash. He said the names of the victims would not be released until the bodies have been formally identified.

Boeing said two of the dead Americans were employees, another American employee was in critical condition and the status of a fourth was not yet certain.

The plane was carrying 135 people in all and not 134 as initially reported, Weterings added.

They were 60 Dutch and 51 Turkish nationals, seven Americans, four Iranians, two Syrians, and one each from Germany, Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, Taiwan and Sudan. The nationalities of two have yet to be determined.

DATA ANALYSIS

Data from the black box of the crashed Turkish Airlines plane will by analyzed by early next week and will help pinpoint the likely cause of the Amsterdam accident, investigators said Friday.

"We expect to have some results after the weekend," Sandra Groenendal, a spokeswoman for the Dutch Safety Board told AFP.

"Data from the black boxes and our investigations at the site should be able to give us an indication of what might have caused the crash. By early next week, we should know what did not cause the crash and ... what did."

The two black boxes are being analyzed by experts in Paris.

"We have listened to the recordings, but the data must still be analyzed," another safety board official, Fred Sanders told AFP.

Sanders said American, French and Turkish experts were aiding the investigation led by the Dutch Safety Board.

ENGINE TROUBLE

Chief investigator Pieter van Vollenhoven was quoted by AP as telling Dutch state television NOS that the Boeing 737-800 had fallen almost directly from the sky, which pointed toward the plane's engines having stopped. He said a reason for that had not yet been established.

Spokeswoman Sandra Groenendal of the Dutch Safety Authority confirmed his remarks and added engine failure was still only "one of the possible scenarios" for the crash.

Van Vollenhoven said an analysis of the plane's flight data recorders in Paris could be completed as early as Friday, but his agency would probably not make a preliminary finding until next week.

"We hope to have a firmer grip as soon as possible," he said, adding the information retrieved from the recorders was of high quality.

Survivors say engine noise seemed to stop, the plane shuddered and then simply fell out of the sky tail-first. Witnesses on the ground said the plane dropped from about 300 feet (90 meters).

Turkish officials have however contradicted the engine failure theory. "If there were problems with the engines, the descending would not have been like this...," General Secretary Savas Sen said in a press conference on Friday.