Turkish Airlines Flight 981

Turkish Airlines Flight 981 was a scheduled flight from Istanbul Yeşilköy Airport to London Heathrow Airport, with an intermediate stop at Orly Airport in Paris. On 3 March 1974, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 operating the flight crashed into the Ermenonville Forest, about 40 km outside Paris, killing all 335 passengers and 11 crew. The crash was also known as the Ermenonville air disaster.

Flight 981 was the deadliest accident in aviation history until 27 March 1977, when 583 people died in the Tenerife airport disaster of two 747 jets. It remains the deadliest single-aircraft accident without survivors, the deadliest accident involving the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, the deadliest accident in the history of Turkish Airlines, and the deadliest aviation accident to occur in France.

Accident

Flight 981 departed from Istanbul at 07:57 local time and landed at Paris's Orly International Airport at 11:02 am local time, after a flight time of just over four hours. The aircraft was carrying 167 passengers and 11 crew members on its first leg, and 50 of these passengers disembarked in Paris. The flight's second leg, from Paris to London Heathrow Airport, was normally underbooked; however, due to a strike by British European Airways employees, and the indecisive result of the general election held in Britain earlier that week, many London-bound travelers, who had been stranded at Orly, were booked onto Flight 981, delaying the flight's departure by 30 minutes.

The aircraft left Orly Airport at 12:32, bound for Heathrow Airport, and took off in an easterly direction, before turning north. Shortly after takeoff, Flight 981 was cleared to flight level 230 (23000 ft) and started turning west towards London. Just after the aircraft passed over the town of Meaux, the rear left cargo door blew off and the sudden difference in air pressure between the cargo area and the pressurised passenger cabin above it, which amounted to 36 kPa, caused a section of the cabin floor above the open hatch to separate and be forcibly ejected through the open hatch, along with six occupied passenger seats attached to that floor section. The fully recognisable bodies of the six Japanese passengers who were ejected from the aircraft along with the rear cargo door were found in a turnip field near Saint-Pathus, approximately 15 km south of the crash site. An air traffic controller noted that, as the flight was cleared to FL230, he had briefly seen a second echo on his radar that remained stationary behind the aircraft; this was likely the remains of the rear cargo door.

When the door blew off, the primary as well as both sets of backup control cables that ran beneath the section of floor that blew out were completely severed, destroying the pilots' ability to control the plane's elevators, rudder, and number two engine. The flight data recorder showed that the throttle for engine two snapped shut when the door failed.

The aircraft almost immediately attained a 20-degree pitch down and began picking up speed, while Captain Berköz and First Officer Ulusman struggled to regain control. At some point, one of the crew members pressed their microphone button broadcasting the pandemonium in the cockpit on the departure frequency. Controllers also picked up a distorted transmission from the plane and the aircraft's pressurisation and overspeed warnings were heard over the pilots' words in Turkish, such as the co-pilot saying, "the fuselage has burst!" or "the cabin blew out!" As the plane's speed increased, the additional lift raised the nose again. An unknown voice was recorded calling out, "Speed!" and engine power was increased in order to level off. Seventy-seven seconds after the cargo door gave way, the plane crashed into the trees of Ermenonville Forest, a state-owned forest at Dammartin's Grove (Bosquet de Dammartin) in the commune of Fontaine-Chaalis, Oise. At the point of impact, the aircraft was traveling at a speed of approximately 783 km/h at a slight left turn, fast enough to disintegrate the plane into thousands of pieces. The wreckage was so fragmented that it was difficult to determine whether any parts of the aircraft were missing before it crashed. Post-crash fires were small because there were few large pieces of the aircraft left intact to burn. Of the 346 passengers and crew on board, only 188 bodies were identifiable (40 of which were identified visually), with rescue teams recovering some 20,000 body fragments in all.