The pilots of a Turkish Airlines plane, which crashed shortly before landing at Schiphol airport last February killing nine people, were largely not to blame for the accident, the Telegraaf reports on Tuesday.

The paper bases its claim on a preliminary report by the Dutch safety council which is currently being circulated in Dutch and US aviation circles, the paper says. Both pilots were killed in the crash.
However, the paper says, there is heavy criticism of aircraft manufacturer Boeing, which built the 737 and was aware of problems with the altitude meters.
Automatic pilot
In their preliminary report on the crash last March, accident investigators said a faulty altitude meter had led to the engine shutting down. The plane was being flown on automatic pilot and eyewitnesses said it appeared to drop out of the sky.
Boeing is being sued by crash survivors and the victim’s families in the US. Four of those killed worked for the aerospace company.
The final report will probably be published at the end of March, a spokesman for the safety council told news agency Novum.