Disaster

No survivors in Pakistan plane crash

A Pakistani passenger plane crashed in fog and intense rain near this capital city on Wednesday morning, killing all 152 people on board, according to civil aviation and airline officials.

Rescue helicopters fought against thick smoke and flames as they tried to find survivors amid the wreckage — about a two-hour drive into the hills above Islamabad — but hours after the crash, Pakistani officials said that none of the 146 passengers or 6 crew members had survived.

Grief-stricken relatives had gathered at Islamabad’s airport hoping for word on survivors. Six members of the Youth Parliament Pakistan had been on board. The United States Embassy here said two Americans had been on the flight.

Dawn Television reported that 100 bodies, many badly burned or mutilated, had been recovered by the afternoon. Officials said that cockpit recorders and the bodies of the pilots had been found.

The plane, an Airbus A321 operated by a relatively new Pakistani airline, Airblue, was flying to Islamabad from Karachi. Imtiaz Inayat Elahi, chairman of the Capital Development Authority, told Express TV that 150 rescuers had been sent to the site, the Margalla Hills, where "it is difficult to work" because of harsh conditions and the densely forested terrain.

"Helicopters cannot just land there," Mr. Elahi said.

Hashim Raza Garvaizi, a captain for Pakistan International Airlines, told GEO television that the airport’s runway had instruments that would allow planes to land even in weather conditions that offered zero visibility. Mr. Garvaizi said that he knew the pilot and that he had an impeccable record. He speculated that the plane could have been struck by lightning or that wind currents could have caused it to dip lower than expected.

Mr. Garvaizi said another flight was diverted to Lahore about 30 minutes before the Airblue crash.

Wednesday’s crash appeared to be one of the deadliest plane crashes in Pakistan in years. In 2006 more than 40 people were killed after a Pakistan International Airlines flight crashed after taking off from Multan, in eastern Pakistan.

Airblue, which began operating in 2004, has flights within Pakistan and to United Arab Emirates; Muscat, Oman; and Manchester, England.

NDTV, an Indian television station, carried a report from Islamabad of a woman who saw the plane, flying low, pass over her house just before the crash. The plane disappeared and she heard a loud explosion, she said.

"I don’t think they could see where they were going," she said.

Another resident, Saqlain Altaf, told a local television station that he was on a family outing in the hills outside of Islamabad when he saw the airliner looking unsteady.

"The plane had lost balance, and then we saw it going down," Mr. Altaf said.

(Published by The New York Times – July 28, 2010)