Pilot issued mayday call before plane hit mountain
Print Edition
A PAKISTANI aircraft carrying 47 people issued a mayday call before losing radar contact and crashing into a mountain, killing everyone on board, authorities said yesterday as they began collecting DNA to identify the victims.
The Pakistan International Airlines flight smashed into a hillside in the country’s north after one of its two turboprop engines failed while traveling from Chitral to the capital Islamabad.
It burst into flames on impact and parts of the wreckage were found hundreds of meters away from the main crash site in Abbottabad district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The pilot of the ATR-42 turboprop aircraft contacted ground authorities after one engine failed and issued a mayday call at 4:14pm, Azam Saigol, the airline’s chairman, told a news conference in Islamabad on Wednesday.
It began descending a minute later before disappearing from radar at 4:16pm.
“This plane was technically sound and was checked in October,” he said, adding that the captain had flown more than 12,000 hours and the aircraft was 9 years old.
“Our focus now is to retrieve all the dead bodies,” he added, vowing a full investigation into the incident.
PIA spokesman Danyal Gilani said the aircraft’s black box had been recovered but “it will take time to ascertain a reason of the crash.”
The dead included Junaid Jamshed, one of the country’s best loved singers who later became a Muslim evangelist, as well as senior local officials and three foreigners — two Austrians and one Chinese.
Dozens of friends and family members gathered at hospitals in Islamabad and Rawalpindi yesterday to try to identify the badly charred remains.
Relatives have been asked to submit DNA samples to help the identification process.
“My friend died in the plane crash, it is a great tragedy for me as he was my childhood friend,” said Murad Khan from Chitral as he waited at the Pakistan Institute for Medical Sciences in Islamabad.
“His relatives have not arrived yet. As I work in Islamabad I am here to receive his body. I don’t know if I will see his face for the last time or not.”
Raja Aamir, whose mother died in the crash, said: “The sudden death of our mother is a great loss for our family — 40 to 50 members of my family have arrived here in Islamabad. We don’t know where we will stay.”
Senior aviation officials yesterday pushed back against allegations that a maintenance lapse had caused the accident.
“One engine of the plane failed after its takeoff from Chitral and the pilot informed us about that in his call to the control. The plane, however, was cleared for flight and that’s why it flew. Had it not been cleared, it would not fly,” said Muhammad Irfan Elahi, a top aviation official.
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