Plane crash in Madrid

This item appears on page 21 of the October 2008 issue.

A Spanair Boeing MD-82 jet headed for Las Palmas, Canary Islands, crashed on takeoff from the Madrid airport on Aug. 20, killing 153 people. Nineteen survived. One of the plane’s two engines had caught fire.

It is the worst crash in Spain since 1983, when an Avianca Boeing 747 crashed at the Madrid airport, killing 181.