Turkish Airlines Flight 1951
aviation accident
Turkish Airlines Flight 1951 (also known as the Poldercrash or the Schiphol Polderbaan incident) was a passenger flight that crashed during landing at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, the Netherlands, on 25 February 2009, resulting in the deaths of nine passengers and crew, including all three pilots.
The aircraft, a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800, crashed into a field about 1.5 km (0.9 mi) north of the Polderbaan runway (18R), prior to crossing the A9 motorway inbound, at 09:26 UTC (10:26 CET), having flown from Istanbul, Turkey. The aircraft broke into three pieces on impact. The wreckage did not catch fire.
The crash was caused primarily by the aircraft's automated reaction, which was triggered by a faulty radio altimeter. This caused the autothrottle to decrease the engine power to idle during approach. The crew noticed this too late to take appropriate action to increase thrust and recover the aircraft before it stalled and crashed. Boeing has since issued a bulletin to remind pilots of all 737 series and BBJ aircraft of the importance of monitoring airspeed and altitude, advising against the use of autopilot or autothrottle while landing in cases of radio altimeter discrepancies.
A 2020 The New York Times investigation claimed that the Dutch investigation into the crash "either excluded or played down criticisms" of Boeing following pressure from Boeing and US federal safety officials, who instead "emphasized pilot error as a factor ... rather than design flaws."
Background
Aircraft
The aircraft operating Flight 1951 was a 7-year-old Boeing 737-8F2 with registration TC-JGE, named "Tekirdağ".
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q862548. Authority coordinates are 52.377, 4.714. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951, 2009 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Turkish Airlines Flight 1951” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.