The crew consisted of Captain Yitzhak Fuchs (59), First Officer Arnon Ohad (32), and Flight Engineer Gedalya Sofer (61).

[9] Captain Fuchs was an experienced aviator, having flown as a fighter-bomber pilot in the Israeli air force in the late 1950s.

Soon after the turn, at 18:27, above the Gooimeer, a lake near Amsterdam, witnesses on the ground heard a sharp bang and saw falling debris, a trail of smoke, and a momentary flash of fire on the right wing while the aircraft was climbing through 1,950 m (6,400 ft).

One boater, a police officer, said he initially thought the two falling objects were parachutists, but as they fell closer he could see that they were plane engines.

[11] The first officer made a Mayday call to air traffic control (ATC) and indicated that they wanted to return to Schiphol.

That differential configuration caused the left wing to generate significantly more lift than the right, especially when the pitch attitude increased as the airspeed decreased.

In the background, the captain was heard instructing the first officer in Hebrew to raise the flaps and lower the landing gear.

The arrival controllers reported that the aircraft had last been located 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi; 0.81 nmi) west of Weesp, and emergency personnel were sent immediately.

The complex was partly inhabited by immigrants from Suriname and Aruba, both former Dutch colonies, and the death toll was difficult to estimate in the hours after the crash.

First responders came upon a rapidly spreading fire of "gigantic proportions" that consumed all 11 floors of the buildings and was 120 metres (390 ft) wide.

[15] Hundreds of people were left homeless by the crash; the city's municipal buses were used to transport survivors to emergency shelters.

The mayor ordered rubble and aircraft wreckage removed, and investigators found the critical engine pylon fuse pins in the landfill.

The aircraft's flight data recorder was recovered from the crash site and was heavily damaged, with the tape broken in four places.

[11] Despite intensive search activities to recover the cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage area, it was never found, though El Al employees stated that it had been installed in the aircraft.

The Netherlands Aviation Safety Board found that the fuse pins had not failed properly, but instead had fatigue cracks prior to overload failure.

[11] Both loss of hydraulic power and damage to the right wing prevented correct operation of the flaps that the crew later tried to extend in flight.

The official probable causes were determined to be:[3]: 46 The design and certification of the Boeing-747 pylon was found to be inadequate to provide the required level of safety.

4 pylon and engine were torn off, part of the leading edge of the wing was damaged and the use of several systems was lost or limited.

[3]: 9  This was considerably lower than expected; the police had originally estimated a death toll over 200[15] and Amsterdam Mayor Ed van Thijn had said that 240 people were missing.

[16] A memorial, designed by architects Herman Hertzberger and Georges Descombes, was built near the crash site with the names of the victims.

A public memorial is held annually to mark the disaster; no planes fly over the area for one hour out of respect for the victims.

After about a year, many residents and service personnel began approaching doctors with physical health symptoms, which the affected patients blamed on the El Al crash.

Insomnia, chronic respiratory infections, general pain and discomfort, impotence, flatulence, and bowel symptoms were all reported.

The Dutch authorities did not believe that the patients were suffering from these symptoms and instead suggested they were caused by mental health problems or trauma as a result of the crash.

In October 1993, the nuclear energy research foundation Laka reported that the tail contained 282 kilograms (622 lb) of depleted uranium as counterweight, as did all Boeing 747s at the time; this was not known during the rescue and recovery process.

In 1997, an expert testified in the Israeli parliament that dangerous products would have been released during combustion of the depleted uranium in the tail of the Boeing 747.

[citation needed] - an eventuality given consideration, but ruled out as improbable, in the Netherlands Air Safety Board's 1994 final report of the accident.

The AMC eventually concluded that up to a dozen cases of autoimmune disorders among the survivors could be directly attributed to the crash, and health notices were distributed to doctors throughout the Netherlands requesting that extra attention be paid to symptoms of autoimmune disorder, particularly if the patient had a link with the Bijlmer crash site.

Another study, performed by the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu, concluded that although toxic products had been released at the time of the crash, the added risks of cancer were small, about one or two additional cases per 10,000 exposed persons.

In 1998, El Al spokesman Nachman Klieman publicly revealed that 190L of dimethyl methylphosphonate, a CWC schedule 2 chemical, had been included in the cargo.