Recently a video appeared that clearly shows the crash involving a Spanair MD-80 that took place on August 20, 2008.

According to the first reports, the left engine caught fire (some reports say there was an explosion) while increasing speed on the ground (approximately 1 km down the runway), and the pilots tried to stop before taking to the sky or reaching the end of the runway. Some reports say the plane actually raised to the skies and then fell back on the ground, to later overrun the runway and break into several parts while catching fire and releasing large plumes of smoke that was visible from a distance around the airport. As seen on the CNN video report there were two plumes of smoke, which indeed would confirm that the plane had broken into at least two parts.

173 people were on board flight JK5022 (code-shared by Lufthansa as LH2554 - Lufthansa has confirmed that 7 people checked in to the flight with Lufthansa tickets - 4 of those were from Germany) which was bound to Las Palmas, on the Canary Islands in Spain, only two hours away from the Spanish capital. Of the 162 passengers and 10 crew (6 active flight crew and 4 passive crew members), 140 of them are already confirmed dead (6 hours after the accident) but more are feared for the worst, as according to airport officials, only 26 people were taken to hospital, 19 of those in critical conditions. (UPDATE: 153 people dead and only 19 survived, as of 21 August.) Madrid’s international airport has been closed for a few hours and was partially reopened later this evening. The fire spread to the surrounding area where grass and vegetation also caught on fire, therefore besides the airport fire engines, even helicopters were involved in the firefighting efforts as shown on the image below. According to reports, all fires have been stopped by around 5pm local time.

According to the airline, the flight was already more than one hour late, due to a technical issue with the plane that forced the first takeoff attempt to be aborted (!!) as there were failure signals while pulling away from the terminal. The aircraft was inspected and then tried to take-off for the second time, which ended in the catastrophe. The McDonnel-Douglas MD-82 type has suffered other engine fire related incidents before. This particular plane (registration number: EC-HFP) first flew in 1993 for Korean Air and has been operated by Spanair since 1999. It had its last major check in January this year.