ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A passenger jet that officials suspect veered off course in monsoon rains and thick clouds crashed into hills overlooking Pakistan’s capital Wednesday, killing all 152 people on board and scattering body parts and twisted metal.
The Airblue jet’s crash was the deadliest ever in Pakistan. At least two U.S. citizens were on the plane, which carried mostly Pakistanis.
The plane left the southern city of Karachi at 7:45 a.m. for a two-hour flight to Islamabad and was trying to land when it lost contact with the control tower, said Pervez George, a civil aviation official. Airblue is a private airline based in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.
The aircraft, an Airbus A321, crashed about9 /2 miles from the Benazir Bhutto International Airport, scorching a wide stretch of the Margalla Hills, including a section behind Faisal Mosque, one of Islamabad’s most prominent landmarks. Twisted metal wreckage hung from trees and lay scattered on the ground. Smoke rose from the scene as helicopters hovered.
The exact cause of the crash was not immediately clear, and rescue workers were seeking the “black box” flight-data recorder amid the wreckage. Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said the government did not suspect terrorism in the crash.
Rescue workers and citizen volunteers were hampered by rain, mud and rugged terrain. The crash was so severe that it would have been nearly impossible for any of the 146 passengers and six crew members to survive, rescue officials said.
“There is nothing left, just piles and bundles of flesh. There are just some belongings, like two or three traveling bags, some checkbooks, and I saw a picture of a young boy. Otherwise everything is burned,” rescue worker Murtaza Khan said.
Imtiaz Inayat Elahi, chairman of the Capital Development Authority, told Express TV that 150 rescuers had been sent to the site, where “it is difficult to work” because of harsh conditions and the densely forested terrain.
“Helicopters cannot just land there,” Elahi said. The wreckage was strewn for about 400 yards atop the Margalla Hills, described by local televisions stations as a two-hour drive up the mountain. Much of the wreckage was found in a deep ravine that was difficult for rescue personnel to reach.
“It is a great tragedy, and I confirm it with pain that there are no survivors,” said Elahi.
The government declared today a day of mourning, and condolences poured in from the U.S., Britain and other nations. Hundreds of people showed up at Islamabad’s largest hospital and the airport seeking information about loved ones on the plane.
They swarmed ambulances reaching the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital, but their hopes fell as rescue workers unloaded bags filled with body parts. People also surrounded a passenger list posted near the Airblue counter at the airport.
“Everybody has to go sometime, but if you see the body, at least you’d get some peace,” said Muhammad Shakeel Bhinder, who had gone to the hospital in place of a co-worker who was too distraught to go.
His colleague, Habibullah Dumki, who works in Islamabad at the Federal Investigation Agency, which probes fraud and other serious crimes, lost his wife and three young children on the flight. “He keeps fainting. He’s in no condition to come here,” Bhinder said.
Among the dead were a newly married couple, en route to the hill resort of Murree outside Islamabad for their honeymoon. Also killed were six members of the “youth parliament,” an initiative by a civil-activist group to train youngsters to be politicians, including the “youth prime minister.” They were all in their late teens or early 20s.
Mirza Ahmed Baig rushed to the hills after hearing that the plane carrying his brother had crashed. He wept amid the chilly weather, criticizing the rescue effort as too little and too lax.
“I’m not satisfied at all on the steps the government is taking,” Baig said.
As of Wednesday night, when rescue work was suspended until the morning, about 115 bodies had been found, federal Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said. He couldn’t be exact as only 12 were intact, he said. DNA tests would be needed to identify most of them, he said.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire confirmed that at least two Americans were on board, but he declined to provide any further information on their identities or links to Pakistan.
In the U.S., Paulette Kirksey said her godmother, Rosie Ahmed of Gadsden, Ala., and her husband, Saleem Ahmed, were among those on the plane. Rosie Ahmed was in Pakistan to make arrangements for Saleem Ahmed to move to the United States, Kirksey said. She said Rosie Ahmed was in her late 50s.
FLYING LOW, UNSTEADY
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the plane was at 2,600 feet and preparing to land when air traffic controllers directed the pilot to change his approach and land on a different runway. The pilot veered off to make a different approach, but then made a sudden ascent to 3,000 feet, Malik said. Malik called the abrupt change in altitude“an unaccounted for factor.”
George said the pilot’s last contact with air traffic controllers came two minutes before the plane crashed and that the pilot did not give any indication that there was a problem on the plane.
Witnesses said the plane appeared to be flying very low and that it seemed unsteady in the air.
“The plane had lost balance, and then we saw it going down,” Saqlain Altaf, who was on a family outing in the hills when the crash occurred, told Pakistan’s ARY news channel.
The Pakistan Airline Pilot Association said the plane may have strayed off course, possibly because of the poor weather. Several officials noted that the plane seemed to be an unusual distance from the airport.
“It should not have gone so far,” said Air Vice Marshal Riazul Haq, deputy chief of the Civil Aviation Authority. “We want to find out why it did.”
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 in weather conditions when there is no visibility.
Garvaizi knew the pilot and said he had an impeccable record.
He said the plane could have been struck by lightning or that wind currents could have caused it to dip lower than expected.
Garvaizi said another flight was diverted to Lahore about 30 minutes before the Airblue crash.
ABOUT THE PLANE
Raheel Ahmed, a spokesman for the airline, said the cause of the crash would be investigated. Airblue flies within Pakistan and to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and the United Kingdom.
Airbus said it would provide technical assistance to the crash investigators. The aircraft was initially delivered in 2000 and was leased to Airblue in January 2006. It accumulated about 34,000 flight hours during some 13,500 flights, it said.
The only previous recorded accident for Airblue, a carrier that began flying in 2004, was a tail-strike in May 2008 at Quetta airport by one of the airline’s Airbus 321 jets. There were no casualties and damage was minimal, according to the U.S.-based Aviation Safety Network.
The last major plane crash in Pakistan was in July 2006 when a Fokker F-27 twin engine aircraft operated by Pakistan International Airlines slammed into a wheat field on the outskirts of the central Pakistani city of Multan, killing all 45 people on board.
Information for this article was contributed by Asif Shahzad, Munir Ahmed, Ashraf Khan, Zarar Khan, Nahal Toosi, Sebastian Abbot and Slobodan Lekic of The Associated Press; by Adam B. Ellick and Kevin Drew of The New York Times; by Alex Rodriguez of the Los Angeles Times; and by Saeed Shah of McClatchy Newspapers.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/29/2010