An airliner packed with families bound for holidays on the Canary Islands crashed during take-off yesterday and turned into a massive fireball, killing 153 people on board and badly injuring 19.

The Spanair twin-engined MD82 aircraft had been running an hour late after being delayed by a faulty temperature gauge at Barajas airport, Madrid.

The left engine lost power at a crucial moment during take-off. The aircraft, which was fully laden with jet fuel, crashed near the end of the runway, split in two and burnt wildly. Twenty-six people were pulled from the wreckage. Firefighters battled for two hours before they could enter the aircraft, where they found only charred human remains. “The plane was completely full of burnt bodies,” a distraught emergency worker said.

A police officer said that the bodies were so hot that they could barely be touched, and the shattered wreckage bore no resemblance to a plane. Herbigio Corral, who headed the rescue effort, told reporters: “Only the tail was recognisable. There was wreckage scattered all over the place and dead bodies across a wide area. A lot of them were children.”

At least two babies were on the aircraft. The flight was a code share with Lufthansa, which had seven passengers on board.

Alan Gemmell, a Briton who was on an aircraft that landed just after the accident, said that a burning field of grass around the wreckage had delayed the emergency effort.

The crash came hours after Spanair pilots threatened to strike over cost-cutting plans by its Scandinavian parent company, SAS. The pilots’ union has accused the company in the past of wallowing in organised chaos.

Spanair recently proposed shedding nearly a quarter of its 4,000 staff because of rising fuel prices and falling demand. A Spanair aircraft was reported to have made an emergency landing in the Canaries last week after developing engine problems mid-flight.

The airline said that it was too early to say what had caused the accident, but questions were already being asked about whether its recent financial woes were in any way to blame.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Prime Minister, broke off his holidays in southern Spain and rushed to Barajas to survey the scene of the crash.

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