Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- The crash involving a Turkish Airlines Boeing Co. 737 plane in Amsterdam today was the carrier’s fourth fatal incident in 15 years, according to the Ascend Online Fleets database.

At least nine of 134 people reported to be aboard the 737- 800 shorthaul jetliner were killed when it came down short of the runway at Schiphol airport, Turkish Airlines Chairman Candan Karlitekin said today in televised comments from Istanbul.

The carrier’s last fatal crash was on Jan. 8, 2003, when an RJ-100 built by BAE Systems Plc went down in fog, killing 70 passengers and five crew. In April 1999, six died when a Boeing 737-400 carrying only crew crashed shortly after takeoff, and in 1994 57 people were killed when another 737 hit terrain on its landing approach. All three accidents occurred in Turkey.

“As modern airlines go, Turkish Airlines does not have a good accident record, having experienced two fatal crashes in the last ten years,” said David Learmount, a former Royal Air Force pilot and safety editor of Flight International. He said it’s possible the plane that crashed today may have suffered a power failure of some kind but declined to speculate further.

Kieran Daly, another former RAF pilot and editor of Air Transport Intelligence, said the absence of an obvious debris trail on the ground suggests the plane’s descent was very rapid, indicating that little or no engine thrust was present.

Extremely Steep

“The damage to the airframe, broken into three parts, allied to the remarks of witnesses, is consistent with the aircraft descending on an extremely steep path for at least the last few seconds of flight,” Daly said. “ That, in turn, is consistent with the plane running out of energy on approach because the engines weren’t producing power.”

No information was immediately disclosed by officials about the cause of the accident as an investigation got underway.

Bob Steensma, public prosecutor for Haarlem, said at a press briefing that he couldn’t comment on speculation that the 737 may have run out of fuel. Airliners are normally required to have about a 10 percent margin of extra fuel in the event of a diversion before landing.

The bodies of three crew members killed in the accident are still in the cockpit and will be left in the plane pending further investigations, the briefing was told.

Boeing’s 737-800 model entered service in 1998 as the Chicago-based manufacturer introduced the so-called Next Generation of its best-selling plane. The aircraft is powered by two CFM56 engines from CFM International, a partnership of General Electric Co. and Safran SA of France.

Investigation Team

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it would send a team of investigators to Amsterdam to assist the Dutch Safety Board in the crash probe. The team will include advisers from Boeing, GE and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Flight International’s Learmont said the accident appears to bear similarities to the crash-landing of a British Airways Plc Boeing 777 at London Heathrow airport in January last year.

In that instance frozen kerosene was found to have caused the crash and some 777 pilots have since been told to rev up their engines before landing to clear ice from fuel Lines. The BA plane with 152 passengers and crew came up short of the runway after the fuel-starved engines couldn’t provide enough thrust. No-one was killed.

The plane involved in today’s accident was delivered in March 2002 and bore the registration number TC-JGE, according to Ascend, which said Turkish Airlines had operated it from new.

The 737-800 model can carry between 162 and 189 passengers, depending on the seating plan.

Still Growing

Turkish Airlines, or Turk Hava Yollari Anonim Ortakligi, has been one of the few carriers to continue growing as the global recession prompts the industry to slash routes and ground aircraft. The passenger total rose 15 percent to 22.5 million last year, swollen by a leap in transit passengers after the Istanbul-based company joined the Star Alliance, led by UAL Corp.’s United Airlines unit and Deutsche Lufthansa AG.

Before today, the last incident involving Turkish Airlines was non-fatal, according to Ascend, with an Airbus SAS A340 widebody plane suffering minor damage on landing in Bangkok on Aug. 21, 2005.

Turkish Air’s worst period for crashes was the 1970s, when the carrier suffered five fatal accidents, including the worst in its history, in which 346 people died after a McDonnell- Douglas DC-10 came down in a forest near Paris while attempting to climb after takeoff. The incident was blamed on component or systems failure, the Ascend database says.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Rothman in Toulouse, France at aerothman@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 25, 2009 14:07 EST