Investigators look into turbulence as crash cause of Turkish plane

Fred Sanders, a spokesman for the Dutch Safety Authority investigation team, said that the wreckage that has lain in a muddy field since it plunged out of the sky Wednesday one mile (1.5 kilometers) short of the runway could be moved Sunday evening, the Associated Press reported.

The Turkish pilots association claimed Friday that turbulence from a large plane landing at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport shortly before the doomed flight, which was carrying 135 passengers and crew from Istanbul, is the most likely cause of the crash.

Turkey Airline Pilots Association (TALPA) Secretary-General Savas Sen said late Friday that a large Boeing 757 had landed at Schiphol Airport two minutes earlier. Sen said that plane most likely created "wake turbulence" that hampered the Turkish aircrafts landing.

"Wake turbulence", an air turbulence created by a pair of vortices trailing in the wake of an aircraft's wing tips, could have hit the descending Turkish plane, preventing it from continuing to fly.

"All possible causes are (being) investigated and turbulence is known to have caused problems in the past, so you never know," Sanders was quoted as saying by the AP.

It was not clear if a Boeing 757 had actually landed just before the Turkish Airlines plane, as claimed by TALPA, he has said earlier.

BLACK BOXES NEXT WEEK

The investigators on Saturday continued to analyze flight data and cockpit recordings retrieved from the Boeing 737-800s "black boxes" and hope to be able to give a preliminary cause of the crash next week.

Sandra Groenendal, spokeswoman for the Dutch Safety Authority, said a first assessment of what went wrong according to the black box data would likely be released by Wednesday.

The Dutch officials said, citing what the eyewitnesses and survivors have said, the plane had fallen almost directly from the sky which pointed toward its engines having stopped.

Engine failure is only "one of the possible scenarios" for the crash. Other possible causes range from weather-related factors to insufficient fuel, loss of fuel, navigational errors, pilot fatigue or bird strikes, news agencies reported citing Dutch officials.

If the TALPA's claims of wake turbulence are proved correct, it would raise questions over whether air traffic controllers warned the pilot of the turbulence before the crash.