CNN reports today on the Jet Crash in London shortly after take-off:
December 22, 1999 Web posted at: 4:19 p.m. EST (2119 GMT)
From staff and wire reports
STANSTED, England (CNN) -- A Korean Air 747 cargo jet crashed on takeoff
Wednesday at Stansted Airport north of London, apparently killing all
four crew members aboard, airport officials said.
One body had been recovered.
"We believe that the people on board did not survive the crash," said
Paul Leaman, operations director of Essex Ambulance Service. An air
traffic controller said all aboard had died.
The plane was only able to climb to about 91 meters (300 feet) before it
crashed about 6:45 p.m. at the edge of Hatfield Forest, one mile (1.6
km) from the airport, according to airport representatives.
Witnesses reported a huge explosion after the crash. The plane was en
route to Milan, Italy.
Stansted is London's third and newest airport, and operates passenger
flights mainly to Europe, besides handling international freight.
Officials closed the airport temporarily after the crash. The airport is
about 25 miles north of London.
<article ends>
Other TV reports have noted that crash which happened overnight our
time, involved a fire ball over a large area and rising up to 400-500
feet. Luckily at the newest London airport, the area under the
flighpaths was open fields. A fully loaded 747 at take-off carries up
to 215,000 litres of highly inflamable fuel. On landing, the fuel is
usually only a small fraction of this capacity, as at take-off the fuel
required is calculated based on the length of flight plus a reserve
amount.
At more or less the same time, a plane crash in South America was a
smaller plan which missed the runway. It killed those on board, but
posed no threat to the residents, due to the lack of a fire-ball effect
and because most crashes on landing are 'missed runways', so they tend
to be at the airport site proper. (In mountainous areas, some arrivals
crash into mountains, but that is not a factor in Sydney - though it
will become one if Badgerys Creek is built.)
Now if that type of 747 'crash after take-off' had happened in Sydney
prior to John Howard coming to power, the plane would most likely have
fallen into Botany Bay. Sydney has had three crashes and each time they
have been into the bay. The Third Runway EIS proposed that 86% of all
take-offs would be over the water, because take-offs are far noisier and
because of the higher accident risk and fuel on board at take-off.
Since John Howard came to power (his electorate being under an arrival
path) the airport has been fully 'turned around' so that virtually all
take-offs are now put over heavily populated areas, with flightpaths
carefully crafted to get 95%+ of all tracks over Labor electorates.
Take-offs now only go out over the bay when southerly winds are so
strong that arrivals over the PM's electorate cannot be avoided.
The result is that large parts of Sydney are now exposed to increased
crash risk which is entirely avoidable. Under the Chicago Convention,
all matters pertaining to aviation management and safety IS MEANT to be
done by entirely independent bodies, to avoid political interference by
the government of the day. The Howard government has violated
Australia's international treaty obligations and has insisted on
hand-picking a gerrymander group of representatives of the PM's
electorate and neighbouring Liberal electorates to actively manage
Sydney's airspace. The Liberal areas of Sydney have 350% more
respresentation than Labor areas, when one calculates the
representatives per 10,000 people affected by KSA. This gerrymander
(SACF) is the primary mechanism used, in addition to ministerial
directives, to ensure that the noise and crash risk of KSA is
disproportionately delivered to Labor electorates.
When the inevitable crash happens in Sydney, the community bodies will
be calling on the NSW Coroner (not subject to Federal political
interference) to lay manslaughter charges against the relevant
politicians and those bureaucrats and purportedly independent board
members who acquiesced to the improper political interference and
refused to carry out their duties with consequent loss of life.
And of course, there is ample clear evidence of electoral bias. John
Howard's letter to Paul Zammit offered electoral bias (which has since
been implemented without public consultation and indeed without even the
gerrymander committee being made aware of the changes - eg international
departures over Laurie Brereton's electorate which were proscribed under
the LTOP). Andrew Thompson claimed in both a Wentworth Courier article
of March 1998 (Clover Moore's office has a copy) and at the Double Bay
public noise rally of 24/5/98 that he did ask that the flightpath
proposed for his electorate throughout the public consultation period be
moved onto adjoining Labor electorates. This was done without any
public consultation, resulting in highly concentrated noise and crash
risk on groups of residents never before exposed to aircraft noise,
whose only mistake was to purchase near a Liberal electoral boundary.
It is near these boundaries that the greatest amounts of aircraft noise
are generated in Sydney as planes do up to 115 degree turns to avoid
flying over Liberal electorates.
--
Graeme Harrison
Email: me@mypostbox.com (or if any problems: merlin@cic.com.au)
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