Lessons to be learned from the major disaster following the civil airliner crash at Kegworth in January 1989

Abstract

On the evening of Sunday, 8 January 1989, a Boeing 737 with 126 passengers and crew on board took off from London en route for Belfast but experienced engine trouble which required its diversion to the East Midlands airport for an emergency landing. East Midlands control tower informed Leicester Police of this potential hazard and Leicester Police informed the Leicester Ambulance Service at 8.12 pm. At 8.26 pm that evening the airliner crashed on the Ml motorway just south of junction 24, just outside the village of Kegworth. This site was on the approach run to East Midlands airport. Three counties border the crash site, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire, and there are three hospitals within 20 miles of the crash site, each of which despatched a flying squad team to the crash site from whence each received patients. On impact the aircraft fragmented into three main sections; the tail, the central fuselage and the cockpit. These sections were impacted on to the motorway embankment which dispatched a flying squad team to the crash site from Aviation fuel had spilled and leaked over the site. Foam had been sprayed on to the area by the airport fire services, ropes and ladders were erected to afford access to the aircraft and mountain rescue teams dug steps in the embankment. The three flying squads (with their doctors and nurses) distributed themselves one to each of the three main segments of the aircraft. The control vehicle (for centralization of communications) arrived on the scene very quickly but had mechanical failure. Attempts were made to create a triage area on the adjacent motorway but initially patients were not triaged, the first 30 patients arriving at Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham, in 30 min. The triage centre had only a transient existence. Evacuation of patients was by ambulances from the services of each of the three counties. Before the end of clearance of patients, three Royal Air Force helicopters assisted in transporting the last six patients to Leicester Royal Infirmary.