AMSTERDAM -- A Turkish Airlines jetliner plummeted out of cloudy skies and plowed into a muddy field on approach to Amsterdam on Wednesday, but remarkably about 125 people -- the vast majority of those aboard -- survived. The nine dead included both pilots.

The Boeing 737-800 en route from Istanbul to Amsterdam broke into three pieces when it hit the ground about two miles short of the runway at Schiphol Airport at 10:31 a.m. local time. The fuselage split in two, close to the cockpit, and the tail broke off.

But the wreckage didn't burn and scores of people walked away from it.

The Boeing Co. said four of its employees, all based in Seattle, were on the plane. They were identified as Ronald A. Richey, John Salman, Ricky E. Wilson and Michael T. Hemmer.

Boeing said the employees were traveling on company business.

Calls by the Seattle P-I to the men's homes Wednesday could not definitively confirm their conditions.

Reached at her home in Clinton, Wilson's wife, Terry, said she was not certain of her husband's condition but believed him to be alive. She had been in contact with Boeing and the State Department, and would be departing soon for Amsterdam.

At Hemmer's home in Federal Way, a woman who answered the phone said she was unsure of Hemmer's status, but said the family believes he is alive.

Calls to the homes of Richey and Salman were not returned Wednesday night.

Boeing would not say what part of the company the four employees work at in the Puget Sound area. But a source said they are with IDS, Boeing's military and space division. Boeing has a large number of IDS employees in the Puget Sound area working on various military programs. The four work on the Peace Eagle 737 program for Turkey.

The Peace Eagle program includes four 737 AEW&C (airborne early warning and control) aircraft plus ground support segments for mission crew training, mission support and system maintenance. Boeing modified the first aircraft at its facilities in Seattle. The remaining three 737s are being modified in Ankara.

Survivor Huseyin Sumer told Turkish NTV television he crawled to safety out of a crack in the fuselage.

"We were about to land, we could not understand what was happening, some passengers screamed in panic but it happened so fast," Sumer said. He said the crash was over in five to 10 seconds.

Pieter van Vollenhoven, head of the Dutch Safety Authority investigating the crash, said it appeared the plane lost speed before crashing.

"You see that because of a lack of speed it literally fell out of the sky," he told NOS radio after visiting the crash site.

The plane's flight data recorders have been found and will be analyzed.

The NTSB said it is sending four people to support the investigation, led by air safety investigator Joe Sedor. The FAA, Boeing and engine maker GE, which represents the CFM56 engine consortium, also are sending experts to help in the investigation.

Turkish Transport Minister Binali Yildirim said it was "a miracle" there were not more casualties.

"The fact that the plane landed on a soft surface and that there was no fire helped keep the number of fatalities low," he said.

Experts said that might also have helped avert a fire resulting from ruptured fuel tanks and lines on the underside of the fuselage, which appeared to have suffered very heavy impact damage.

Having almost reached its destination, the plane would have used up a major portion of its fuel.

Experts say crashes involving modern airliners are more survivable due to engineering advances that have resulted in strengthened structures and fire retardant technologies used for cabin seats and furnishings, as well as better emergency training of both cockpit and cabin crews.

At first, Turkish Airlines said everyone survived Wednesday's crash. But Michel Bezuijen, acting mayor of Haarlemmermeer, later reported the fatalities. He initially said 135 people were on board, but changed that figure to 134.

A spokesman for investigators said two pilots and an apprentice pilot were among the dead.

Six of the injured were in critical condition, 25 were seriously hurt and 24 had slight injuries, health authorities said.

Survivors were taken to 11 hospitals, including an emergency field hospital set up by the military in the central city of Utrecht.

The Turkish ambassador to the Netherlands, Selahattin Alpar, told Turkish news agency Anatolia there were 72 Turks and 32 Dutch citizens on board.

Investigators will explore a wide range of possible causes of the crash, ranging from weather-related factors such as wind shear or icing, to fuel starvation, navigational errors, pilot fatigue or bird strikes.

Experts say initial results could be made public soon because of the sophistication of the Boeing 737-800's black boxes, although the full report will likely not be ready before the end of the year.

Weather at the airport near the time of the crash was cloudy with slight drizzle.

But Candan Karlitekin, the head of the airline's board of directors, told reporters that visibility was good at the time of landing.

"Visibility was clear and around 5,000 yards. Some 550 yards before landing, the plane landed on a field instead of the runway," he said.

"We have checked the plane's documents and there is no problem concerning maintenance," he added.

Turkish Airlines chief Temel Kotil said the captain, Hasan Tahsin, was very experienced and a former air force pilot. Turkish officials said the plane was built in 2002 and last underwent thorough maintenance Dec. 22.

Turkish Airlines has had several serious crashes since 1974, when 360 people died in the crash of a DC-10 near Paris after a cargo door came off. More recently, in 2003, 75 died when an RJ-100 missed the runway in heavy fog in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.

Boeing's 737 is the world's best-selling commercial jet, with more than 6,000 orders since the model was launched in 1965.

The 737-800, a recent version of the plane, has a "very good safety record," said Bill Voss, president of the independent Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va.

"It has been involved in a couple of accidents, but nothing that relates directly back to the aircraft," he said, adding that the plane had the best flight data recorders, which should give investigators a rich source of information about the crash.

Wim Kok, a spokesman for the Dutch Anti-Terror Coordinator's office, said terrorism did not appear to be a factor.

Boeing's Web site shows it has delivered all 49 737-800s ordered by the airline.

This was only the third fatal crash of a next-generation 737 in which passengers died.

In 2007, a Kenya Airways 737-800 crashed in Africa during a driving rainstorm. The cause has not been determined. All passengers and crew were killed.

Several months earlier, in 2006, a GOL Airlines 737-800 crashed in Brazil when the Boeing plane collided at cruise altitude with a Legacy business jet that was headed to the United States. The executive jet, manufactured by Embraer, was carrying seven passengers and crew, including Joe Sharkey, a journalist for The New York Times. The smaller plane managed to land despite damage to one of its wings. Everyone on the GOL jet was killed.

The first of Boeing's next-generation 737 family of jets entered airline service in 1997. Rather than an all-new design, these next-generation planes are based on the older 737s, but with extensive improvements and new systems. The 737-800 entered airline service in the spring of 1998.

There was also a fatal accident involving another next-generation 737 when a Southwest 737-700 was unable to stop after landing in a snowstorm at Chicago's Midway Airport. But the fatality was on the ground. The plane went through a fence at the end of the runway and hit at least two cars, killing a 6-year-old boy in one.