Three die as plane skids on landing, breaks apart
A Turkish airliner skidded off a runway, crashed into a ditch and broke apart while landing in bad weather in Istanbul yesterday, killing three people and injuring dozens more. Passengers had to scramble through the split fuselage to escape.
The aircraft, operated by lowcost carrier Pegasus Airlines, was arriving at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport from the western Turkish city of Izmir with 183 passengers and crew on board when it had what the Transportation Ministry described as a ‘‘rough landing.’’
Istanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya said the plane failed to ‘‘hold onto the runway’’ and skidded some 50-60 metres before it dropped into the ditch from a height of about 30m.
‘‘We are deeply saddened ... (But) we are very happy that we escaped a greater accident,’’ Yerlikaya said, adding that the plane could have burst into flames.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca reported that three people had died and 179 required care at multiple hospitals.
Rescuers, assisted by an excavator, were seen working on one spot on the wreckage and it was not clear if they were searching for one person who remains unaccounted for.
The airport was shut down after the incident, which occurred at around 6.30pm local time and flights were diverted to Istanbul’s main airport.
Survivor Dogus Bilgic, 24, told Turkish television channel NTV that he fled the smashed plane by way of a gap near his seat and was one of the first passengers to get out. ‘‘We travelled (on the runway) for some 20 or 30 seconds, then all of a sudden we flew off the runway,’’ he said while seated in a wheelchair because of a leg injury. ‘‘It happened in seconds.’’
‘‘I was seated in 25C. I believe the plane broke apart at row 26,’’ Bilgic recalled, adding that he threw himself out of the plane when he saw the opening.
‘‘The front (of the plane) was in a terrible state. I saw, after I was on the ground, that it had completely broken apart,’’ he said.