Contrary to earlier media reports, Sunday’s crash of an El Al cargo jet outside Amsterdam was not the airline’s first.
Forty-one years ago, some months after the national airline was established, an El Al plane crashed on a landing approach to Kloten airport in Zurich, Switzerland. The November 1951 disaster killed six of the seven crew members aboard.
Veteran airline staffers said the DC-4 cargo plane was one of the few in the company’s fledgling fleet at the time.
El Al sources said there had never been any attempt to cover up the 1951 crash. “Nobody asked us about it,” a spokesman said.
Only one other El Al plane has been downed: a passenger plane was shot down by Bulgarian fighter planes in 1955 for violating Bulgarian air space.
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