Pakistan plane crash: Everybody onboard dead including a famous Pakistani singer, engine failure lead the crash
December 8,2016- Pakistan
Source: BBC
The entire 48 people on board a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) aircraft were killed when it crashed close to Abbottabad in northern Pakistan on Wednesday, government officials and the airline said. The famous pop singer turned Islamic preacher, Junaid Jamshed, was also on board.
Flight PK-661 that took off from Chitral, a northern tourist destination near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, to Islamabad went down in the Havelian locale, about 70km (43 miles) north of Islamabad.
There were 42 passengers, five team members and one ground engineer on board, the airline affirmed.
At least 40 bodies were taken from the crash location on Wednesday night and brought to a hospital in Abbottabad. Recuperation efforts were unrelenting, aided by hundreds of soldiers, but officials apprehended out little hope that anyone would be found breathing.
Three foreigners were amid the dead, with Austria’s foreign ministry afterward confirming two of its nationals were no more and Chinese state media saying one of its citizens was also among the fatalities.
The aircraft took off from Chitral at about 10:00 GMT (15:00 local time), losing touch 90 minutes later, before long it was due to turn up at its destination.
In a telephone conference, the director general of the Civil Aviation Authority, Asim Suleiman, said that in the minutes before collide, the plane’s pilot radioed to air traffic controllers that the left engine had flamed out. “Two minutes later, he lost contact,” Mr. Suleiman said.
Rescue personnel and people from close by villages had to walk for an hour to arrive at the crash spot. Local television news networks transmit images of the emblazing debris of the aircraft, sprawled over a large undulating area, as dozens of people headed for the wreckage.
The national carrier has been indicted of safety failures in the past, but insisted harsh checks on this plane left “no scope for any technical error”.
The most recent major crash concerning a PIA aircraft, in 2006, left 44 people deceased.
