PIA flight PK-661 pilot issued Mayday call before deadly crash
Aviation officials pushed back against allegations that a maintenance lapse had caused the accident.
SADDHA BATOLNI (AFP) - A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) aircraft carrying 47 people issued a Mayday call before losing radar contact and crashing into a mountain, killing everyone on board, authorities said, as they began collecting DNA Thursday to identify victims.
FIA flight PK-661 smashed into a hillside in the country’s north after one of its two turboprop engines failed while travelling from the city of Chitral to the capital Islamabad.
PIA spokesman Danyal Gilani said the aircraft’s black box has been recovered but "it will take time to ascertain a reason of the crash".
Senior aviation officials on Thursday 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.
Rescuers, including hundreds of villagers, had overnight pulled badly burned remains from the smoldering wreckage of the aircraft near the village of Saddha Batolni.
"We put into sacks whatever we could find... and carried them down to the ambulance," a villager in his thirties, who declined to give his name, told AFP.
A senior rescue official on the site who requested anonymity added: "The villagers told us that the plane was shaky before it crashed. It was about to hit the village but it seems that the pilot managed to drag the plane towards the hills."
Wednesday’s crash was the fourth deadliest on Pakistani soil.
The country’s worst air disaster was in 2010, when an Airbus 321 crashed into the hills outside Islamabad while about to land, killing all 152 on board -- an incident blamed on pilot error.
