Engine trouble may have caused a Turkish Airlines flight to crash in the Netherlands, according to the chief investigator probing the incident.
Pieter van Vollenhoven told Dutch state television NOS Thursday that evidence suggests the plane lost power, pointing to the fact that the aircraft fell almost directly from the sky.
He said investigators have not yet determined why the engine had trouble.
A spokesperson for the Dutch Safety Authority confirmed that NOS had accurately reported van Vollenhoven's statements and said engine power failure was "one of the possible scenarios" for the crash.
Transportation safety officials in Amsterdam took detailed photos of the plane's wreckage on Thursday, and analyzed for the first time the contents of a black box flight recorder.
Fred Sanders, spokesman for the Dutch Safety Authority, said the plane's flight recorders have been sent to Paris and will be analyzed by experts.
In the meantime, crash-site analysts are probing the dramatic wreckage and debris, which is scattered across the farmer's field.
"Another team is on the location today, taking photos of the wreckage and assembling information from various sources," he said.
Details of the crash
The Boeing 737 Flight TK1951 dropped out of the air roughly two kilometres short of the runway on Wednesday morning.
Only nine of the 135 passengers were killed and 86 were injured -- a result many have described as miraculous. Although the plane broke into three pieces, it didn't catch on fire, which likely accounted for the low number of fatalities.
The dead have been identified as being five Turks and four Americans, according to a Dutch mayor. Names have not been released yet.
Boeing Co. said that two of its employees were among the dead. The air giant said a third employee was injured.
Turkey's ambassador to the Netherlands, Selahattin Alpar, said there were 72 Turks on board the plane and 32 Dutch citizens. There was no immediate word on the nationalities of the other passengers.
Both pilots died in the crash, but other members of the crew, as well as passengers, were able to walk away from the site.
Both of the plane's engines tore off during the crash. One of the engines was lying almost intact near the wreckage while the second engine, which was more heavily damaged, rested about 200 metres from the plane.
Also, the fuselage ripped in two and the plane's tail broke off.
Survivor Huseyin Sumer told Turkish NTV television that he crawled out of the plane through a crack in the fuselage.
"We were about to land, we could not understand what was happening, some passengers screamed in panic but it happened so fast," Sumer said, adding that the crash was over in five to 10 seconds.
It was cloudy and drizzling at the time of the crash, but reporters were told visibility was good.
Airline officials said they have checked the plane's documents, which indicate that there were no maintenance concerns.
The plane was built in 2002 and underwent maintenance on Dec. 22.
