Even an engine fire should not have been fatal to a commercial jet, aviation experts said today.

When the left engine of an American Airlines MD-82 caught fire soon after takeoff from St Louis last September – in an incident that appears to be very similar to today’s crash – the pilots were able to turn the plane round and land without any injuries.

Human error or a series of mechanical failures are the most likely causes of the carnage on board flight JK5022.

One theory is that other flight systems were damaged by debris from the burning engine puncturing the fuselage.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series had already experienced a difficult year before today’s disaster.

Last month, the American Federal Aviation Administration ordered the entire US fleet be inspected for potential cracking on overwing frames and American Airlines grounded its fleet of MD-80s in April after fears of electrical faults.

David Learmount, safety editor of Flight International magazine, insisted that today’s catastrophic accident, however, would have nothing to do with the safety record of this model of plane.

He suggested that human error was a more likely cause.

“If the crew had the aeroplane under control it would not have happened. Aeroplanes are not allowed to fly unless they have a good safety record,” he said.

Planes like the MD-80 are able to continue get airborne and then land safely even one engine fails during takeoff, Mr Learmount said.

“So the question is, what else did they have to contend with?”

Nor does the airline, Spanair, have a history of safety problems, Mr Learmont said. “Western European airlines just don’t have bad safety records.”

The MD-80, originally built by McDonnell Douglas, is now part of Boeing’s fleet. It is a medium haul plane often used for flights within Europe.

They have a seating capacity up to 172 passengers and crew with a cabin layout that seats 140 passengers on scheduled flights and 161 or 165 on low-cost or charter flights.

Spanair said the plane involved in today’s accident was an EC-HFP, an MD-82 ex-Korean Air which flew for the first time in 1993.

Spanish media reports have suggested that the left engine caught fire as the plane tried to take off but Mr Learmount said: “If that was all that happened, the pilots would have shut the engine down and put it out. Even if they had been flying at the time they could have landed safely.

“A simple engine failure would not have done this. There must have been something else as well. Every six months pilots re-train and they practice an engine failure. It’s the one event that they get more training in than any other.”

Even the failure of both engines of a big jet need not necessarily lead to disaster – when both engines failed on a British Airways Boeing 777 coming in at Heathrow in January, the pilots were able to perform an emergency landing with only minor injuries, and most of these were sustained during evacuation of the plane.

The US National Transportation Safety Board lists 16 accidents involving the MD-82 in the past five years, three of which were fatal.

In September last year a Thai Orient MD-82 crashed at the side of the runway at Phuket International Airport in Thailand, killing 89 of the 130 people on board.

In 2005, an MD-82 operated by West Caribbean Airways crashed in a mountainous region in northwest Venezuela killing all 152 passengers and eight crew.

And in 2004, one operated by Lion Air overran the runway in Solo City, Indonesia, killing 25.

Others in the MD-80 series have also suffered problems. Last November an Atlasjet MD-83 crashed coming into Isparta airport in Turkey, leaving 57 dead.

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