Un avion cu 152 de persoane la bord s-a prabusit in Pakistan

Titlu: Un avion cu 152 de persoane la bord s-a prabusit in Pakistan
Sursa: http://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-international-7635972-video-avion-152-persoane-bord-prabusit-pakistan.htm
Autor:S. Mihailescu
Data: 28.07.2010

Citat :

Un avion cu 152 de persoane s-a prabusit, miercuri dimineata, langa Islamabad - transmit agentiile internationale de ​presa. Avionul, care apartine companiei Airblue, decolase din Karachi si pierduse legatura cu turnul de control inainte de a se prabusi. Nu se cunosc cauzele accidentului.

Potrivit primelor informatii, nu exista supravietuitori. Nu se cunosc cauzele accidentului. Martorii sustin ca zona in care s-a prabusit aparatul este greu accesibila, din cauza fumului, iar in zona ploua. Autoritatile au declarat stare de urgenta.

La bord se aflau 146 de pasageri si 6 membri ai echipajului.

"Avem informatii ca avionul a cazut in zona deluroasa Margalla. Este mult fum, nu am reusit sa ajungem acolo. Este inconjurat de dealuri si nu exista drum de acces," a declarat un oficial al politiei, citat de AFP, care a precizat ca este vorba de o aeronava privata Airblue.

"Ploua. Am vazut avionul zburand foarte jos de la fereastra biroului," a declarat un martor citat de Reuters.

UPDATE ora 09:30 Echipele de salvare au recuperat 5 cadavre.

Se pare ca este vorba de un A319.

Dap, A319 era, si era si cam full.

http://www.airbuzz.ro/2010/07/a319-airblue-prabusit-la-islamabad.html

321:
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/07/28/345434/airblue-a321-involved-in-fatal-pakistan-crash-identified.html

Ar exista 5 supravietuitori pana acum...

Se pare ca nu au fost supravietuitori :

Titlu: No Survivors In Pakistan Plane Crash
Sursa: http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1280321072.html
Autor: Reuters
Data: 28.07.2010

Citat :

A Pakistani passenger plane crashed in heavy rain near Islamabad on Wednesday, killing at least 90 people and officials said it was unlikely that there would be any survivors among the 152 people on board.

The Airbus A321, belonging to private airline Airblue, crashed into a heavily wooded and hard-to-access hillside while flying from the southern port city of Karachi. Rescue workers were scouring the site for bodies, officials said.

"Most of the bodies are charred. We're sending body-bags via helicopters. It's a very difficult operation because of the rain," said Aamir Ali Ahmed, a senior city government official.

"We can pray and hope but what experts are saying is that there's no chance of any survivors," he added.

Earlier reports that five survivors had been pulled from the wreckage were wrong, said Imtiaz Elahi, chairman of the state-run Capital Development Authority, a city municipal body.

"It would be a miracle but we're not expecting any survivors," said another official, who declined to be named.

Rescuers said they had to dig through the rubble with their bare hands, with fire and thick smoke hampering their work. The fire has since been extinguished, but access to the hillside remained limited to pedestrians and helicopters.

"You find very few intact bodies. Basically, we are collecting bodies parts and putting them in bags," Bin Yameen, senior officer in the Islamabad police, said from the scene of the crash.

"I don't know the exact death toll but one can imagine not many could survive in such a bad situation.

The plane lost contact with the control room of the Islamabad International Airport at 4:43 GMT. It was carrying 146 passengers and six crew members.

The crash site is on the Margalla Hills facing Islamabad, about 300 metres up the side of the hills. Smoke could be seen from some districts of the city after the crash.

"It was raining. I saw the plane flying very low from the window of my office," witness Khadim Hussain said. Heavy monsoon rains have lashed the area for the past few days.

NEW PLANE

The military said it had sent three helicopters to the site and troops had also been moved there. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was surveying rescue operations from the air and the government declared Thursday a day of mourning for the victims.

Airblue began operations in 2004 with a fleet of Airbus A320 and A321 aircraft, according to its website. It flies primarily domestic routes as well as to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Manchester in Britain.

Spokesman Raheel Ahmed said this was the first crash for the airline and that an investigation was being launched.

"It's too early to speculate," he said about the cause of the crash. "The civil aviation authorities will also be involved."

Airbus confirmed one of its planes was involved in the Airblue crash.

"We regret to confirm there has been an accident with an Airbus aircraft and we will provide more information when we have more confirmed data available," said Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath.

At Islamabad's international airport, passengers in the departure lounge scanned the television screens for news.

"I'm not surprised something like this has happened," said Ahmed Fairuz, a passenger awaiting departure. "The weather is just too bad for flying."

Aviation industry sources in Europe said the aircraft was leased from International Lease Finance Corporation. Los Angeles-based ILFC was not available for comment and there was no immediate confirmation of these details.

The A321 is the largest of the A320 family of single-aisle jets produced by Airbus. This particular type of aircraft, which can seat up to 185 passengers, has been in service since 1994.

Forty-five people were killed when a passenger plane belonging to Pakistan International Airlines crashed near the central city of Multan in 2006.

Including the 2006 incident, PIA has had 11 crashes since 1957, according to AirDisaster.

Titlu: Pakistani aircraft that crashed was doing circling approach to runway
Sursa: Flightglobal
Autor: Leithen Francis
Data: 29.07.2010

Citat :

The Airblue Airbus A321 that crashed yesterday, killing all 152 people on board, was doing a circling approach to runway 12 at Islamabad's Benazir Bhutto International Airport.

The "aircraft was [doing] a visual circling approach to land at runway 12, it was not in a holding pattern", Airblue CEO, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, says in an email to ATI.

He says: "The weather at the time was foggy with low clouds."

"The crash site is north of the 30-12 runway at ISB [Islamabad airport] and about 10 kilometres [away] in the Margalla mountains".



Shahid says the pilot in command of the A321, local registration AP-BJB, was Capt Pervez Iqbal Chaudhary who had over 25,000hr of flying experience.

Pervez as well as the aircraft's five other crew and 146 passengers were all killed in the crash. The accident occurred yesterday at around 10:00hr local time.

The aircraft had left Karachi airport earlier that morning and was performing a scheduled passenger service to Islamabad.

Initial reports quoted the country's interior minister, Rehman Malik, as saying there were five survivors but his assessment later proved to be in correct.

The country's prime minister, Yousef Raza Gilani, has declared today (29 July) a day of national mourning.

The last time that Pakistan had a fatal crash, involving a passenger commercial aircraft, was in 2006 when a Pakistan International Airlines Fokker F27 crashed and killed 45 people.

Airblue is a privately-owned carrier and the country's second-largest airline. Besides the aircraft that crashed, the airline also has two other A321s as well as one Airbus A320 and two Airbus A319s, says Flightglobal's ACAS database.

Airbus says the aircraft that crashed was built in the year 2000 and had accumulated approximately 34,000 flight hours in some 13,500 flights.

ACAS says International Lease Finance is the aircraft's owner. Airbus says Airblue started leasing it in January 2006.

Titlu: Heavy Rains Delay Salvage Of Crashed Pakistan Plane
Sursa: http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1280417329.html
Autor: Reuters
Data: 29.07.2010

Citat :

Heavy monsoon rains in Islamabad on Thursday hampered recovery efforts at the site of a Pakistani plane crash that killed all 152 people on board a day earlier, a senior police officer said.

The Airbus A321, belonging to private airline AirBlue, crashed on Wednesday into a steep and heavily-wooded hillside in Islamabad shortly before it was due to land after a flight from the southern port city of Karachi.

Thick fog and rainy weather are considered the most likely reasons for the worst aviation accident on Pakistani soil.

Bin Yameen, deputy inspector-general with the Islamabad police, said the operation to recover the remains of victims could not be resumed due to the heavy rain. Difficulty in accessing the site was also complicating salvage efforts.

"We are waiting for the rain to stop. In such weather, neither helicopters can fly nor rescue workers move up easily.

"We may give it a try but it seems very difficult to carry out such operation in difficult terrain," he said.

Investigators were looking into causes of the crash, said senior Civil Aviation Administration officer Ayaz Jadoon.

"They're going through records and documents, though they couldn't go up because of bad weather," he said, adding the plane's flight data recorder has yet to be recovered.

EVIDENCE WASHING AWAY

The control tower at the airport was sealed off, and radio traffic between the plane and the tower was being examined.

The torrential rain may also damage, or wash away, evidence at the site.

"Time is very precious," the investigation team's head, Khawaja Abdul Majeed, told Dawn News television after arriving in Islamabad late Wednesday from Karachi.

"We have to collect evidence as soon as possible, so we don't have much time."

While Wednesday's crash is the worst aviation accident inside Pakistan, the state-owned airline PIA has had worse disasters. In 1979 and 1992, PIA jets crashed in Saudi Arabia and Nepal, killing 156 and 167 people, respectively.

Within Pakistan, the last major aviation accident was in 2006 when a PIA plane crashed near the central city of Multan killing 45 people.

The federal information minister said late on Wednesday rescue workers had been able to recover 115 bodies during a day-long operation at the hard-to-access site.

Some relatives gathered at the city's main Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) hospital to identify bodies.

A hospital official, Tahir Nadeem, said 59 bodies had been identified and taken away by their relatives while the remaining bodies -- mostly in pieces -- have been sent to the morgue.

The government declared a day of mourning on Thursday for the victims.

"My heart and mind are not ready to believe that he has died. I'm still hoping he might call me anytime," civil engineer Nadeem Ahmed said, as he searched among the bodies at the hospital for his brother. Ahmed did not find his brother's body.

Sarfraz Chaudhry, a retired soldier, was hoping to find the body of his sister, Gulzar Bibi, who was one of eight family members on the ill-fated plane.

"She was coming here to attend a funeral of a 90-year-old relative, but nobody knew that she and others would have their last day," he said.

"We have identified six of our dead relatives, but of my sister and one other, we are still searching and hope that we find them."

Titlu: "Black Box" Recovered From Pakistan Crash Site
Sursa: http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1280763518.html
Autor: Reuters
Data: 02.08.2010

Citat :

Pakistani investigators have found the data recorder from AirBlue flight 202, which crashed in heavy rain near Islamabad last week killing all 152 people onboard, officials said.

The Airbus A321 crashed on Wednesday into a steep and heavily wooded hillside overlooking the capital shortly before landing after a flight from the southern port city of Karachi.

"It (the data recorder) has been recovered from the scene, from the tail of the plane," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters near the site of the crash.

The Director General of the Civil Aviation Authority, Junaid Ameen, told television channel Geo that both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder -- the so-called "black box" -- had been found.

Thick fog and rainy weather are considered the most likely reasons for the worst aviation accident on Pakistani soil.