A tornado caused the 1981 crash of a commercial jet
The 1981 wreck in the Netherlands is likely the only commercial flight to crash in a twister
Seventeen people died in the Netherlands on Oct. 6, 1981, after a passenger jet flew into a cluster of thunderstorms and encountered a tornado.
The incident is perhaps the only known instance of a commercial flight crashing as a direct result of a twister.
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NLM CityHopper Flight 431 took off into stormy skies over Rotterdam, the Netherlands, late on a Tuesday afternoon. The flight had a stopover in the nearby city of Eindhoven before heading off to its destination in Hamburg, Germany.
A weather briefing about half an hour earlier had alerted the crew to heavy thunderstorms along their flight path south of the airport.
The aircraft violently shook upon entering a thunderstorm eight minutes after departure, according to a report prepared by officials in the wake of the crash.
Instrumentation measured a sharp pressure change as the plane unknowingly flew directly into a tornado within the larger storm. “This resulted in large positive and negative loads occurring in quick succession,” the report read.
Aircraft are built to withstand a significant amount of turbulence. But the forces involved in the tornado were too great for the airframe to handle.
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The plane’s right wing bent, crumpled, and snapped off mid-flight. Flight 431 crashed near the town of Moerdijk, just south of Rotterdam, killing everyone on board. Crews reportedly found the broken wing 3 kilometres from the crash site.
Thunderstorms have contributed to dozens of high-profile airliner crashes over the years, though the 1981 incident in the Netherlands is the only known crash directly involving a tornado.
Most thunderstorm-related crashes are due to microbursts, which are strong gusts of wind that push downward out of the base of a thunderstorm.
These winds are a major hazard during takeoff and landing. Airports and airplanes both now have robust safety features to protect against the threat of microbursts.
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