The judge investigating the crash of Spanair flight JK 5022 at Madrid’s Barajas airport on August 20th in which 154 people lost their lives, has ordered the creation of a judicial commission of inquiry to run in parallel to the one set up by the Ministry of Public Works.
Judge Juan Javier Pérez, who stated that the apparent cause of the crash was the failure of flaps and slats to deploy, has also accused two Spanair technicians and the head of the maintenance section of negligent homicide and causing injury through negligence.
The judge noted that the flaps were in ‘flight mode’, i.e. not configured for take-off, but there was no alarm signal to alert the pilots to that fact. He said the technicians checking the plane after the first aborted take-off had failed to spot this.