No survivors in Turkish plane crash

All 57 passengers on board are killed as jetliner goes down in southwestern Turkey.

Grieving relatives are in a state of shock [AFP]

30 Nov 2007

He also said the cause of the crash was not known. He ruled out weather conditions, saying there was no fog or strong winds at the time.

Doganer said: “There was no rain, snowfall or storm at the plane’s destination. There were no technical problems with the plane.”

“This is a very interesting accident. One can come up with a thousand scenarios as to what happened.”

All on board were of Turkish nationality. A group of academics aboard the plane were reportedly planning to take part in a physics conference in Isparta.

Black boxes recovered

An investigation team has “recovered the cockpit voice recorder(CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR) devices, known as black boxes, and are pursuing their investigation of the crash site,” Turkey’s civil aviation authority said in a statement.

The data in the CVR and FDR is expected to shed light on the cause of the crash.

Al Jazeera’s Yousef al-Sharif, reporting from the capital, Ankara, said the Turkish public is shocked by the accident.

He said: “People here see it as a tragedy, and are very shocked because they do not know what caused the accident.”

‘Human error’

Turkey’s transport ministry said in a statement that the debris of the plane was spotted by helicopters on a hill near the village of Keciborlu, about 12km from the Suleyman Demirel airport.

Binali Yildirim, the transport minister, said: “No matter what measures you take, plane accidents happen and we see that 80 to 85 per cent are due to human mistakes.”

Turkey is now in winter with snow and fog common on higher ground. Atlasjet was set up in 2001 by Turkish tour operator Oger Tours.

It currently has a fleet of 15 aeroplanes and flies to destinations in Turkey and overseas, including Austria, Finland, Italy, Spain and several Balkan countries.

Source : Al Jazeera, News Agencies