SURVIVORS of an air crash near Glasgow Airport which killed eight people heard a loud noise shortly before the tragedy, according to air accident investigators.

An interim report by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch released yesterday said passengers heard a bang or thud moments after take-off from the airport.

Witnesses on the ground then reported hearing an engine spluttering shortly before the doomed Cessna 404 Titan aircraft nose-dived into fields near the town of Linwood, Renfrewshire, less than a mile from the runway.

The brief report also stated that the pilot of the Edinburgh Air Charters Ltd flight managed to send out a brief emergency radio signal before the plane hit the ground and burst into flames.

It added that the weight of the 11-seater plane, which crashed en route to Aberdeen on September 3, was ''close to the maximum permitted for take-off''.

Six Airtours staff, who were being transferred to Aberdeen to join a flight to Majorca, died in the accident.

The pilot and founder of Edinburgh Air Charters Ltd, John Easson, 48, was also killed along with his 54-year-old co-pilot, Bill Henderson.

Three Airtours employees survived with spinal injuries and burns. Two of them, Hugh O'Brien, 39, and 23-year-old Derek Morrison were later discharged from Glasgow's Southern General Hospital. The third survivor, Kevan MacKenzie, 32, has been moved to Glasgow Royal Infirmary where he is comfortable.

The AAIB interim report stated: ''According to survivors the take-off proceeded normally until shortly after the aircraft became airborne when they heard a thud or bang.

''The aircraft was then seen by external witnesses at low height with left bank applied which later developed into a right bank and gentle descent.''

It went on: ''Witnesses reported hearing an engine spluttering and saw at least one propeller rotating slowly. There was a brief emergency radio transmission from the commander and the aircraft was seen in a steep right turn. It then entered a dive.''

The report added that a witness saw the wings level off before the plane struck the ground and caught fire.

qA Scots businessman, who died with his wife when their two-seater aircraft crashed into a hillside, had become ''lost'' because of low mist and fog-banks.

An inquiry by the AAIB, which reported yesterday, said shopkeeper George Sutherland, 58, who died with his wife Mary, 55, ''was not trained or qualified for instrument flight'' in low cloud conditions.

The flight, from Dornoch, Sutherland, to Inverness, ended in tragedy on the afternoon of May 9 when the Jodel aircraft crashed on the north side of the Cromarty Firth.