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Jet Crashed Into Mountain Within 7 Miles Of Airport

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By SELCAN HACAOGLU, The Associated Press

Published: December 1, 2007

YESILYURT, Turkey - An Atlasjet plane crashed on a rocky mountain shortly before it was due to land in southwest Turkey on Friday, killing all 57 people on board, including a 6-week-old girl going to see her grandparents for the first time.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-83, carrying 50 passengers and seven crew members, took off from Istanbul about 1 a.m. for the one-hour flight to Isparta province, but it went off the radar just before landing at the airport.

A rescue helicopter reached the plane's wreckage near the village of Yesilyurt about 7 a.m., and reported no survivors, said Tuncay Doganer, the airline's chief executive.

The plane crashed on a mountain around 5,000 feet high, and rescuers initially had difficulty reaching the wreckage because of the rugged terrain, Atlasjet said. The crash site was seven miles from the airport.

"The pilot saw the airport and informed the tower that it was inbound. The plane then disappeared," Doganer said.

He said the cause of the crash was unknown, but ruled out technical failure and said the weather and visibility were good.

There were no indications that terrorism or sabotage was the cause, said Ali Ariduru, head of Turkey's civil aviation authority. The area where the plane crashed is not a traditional stronghold of a Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy from Turkey.

Pieces of wreckage and personal belongings, including suitcases, clothing and magazines, were strewn across the hillside. Rescue workers in bright yellow jackets entered the plane's fuselage, which lay amid boulders and pine trees.

Investigators found the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, the civil aviation authority said.

Weeping relatives approached the crash site, but were turned away by soldiers and other officials who sought to comfort them. Many bodies were not identifiable, firefighter Osman Emir said.

Ali Ceylan said he lost his 6-week-old granddaughter, who was born in Istanbul and returning home to Isparta. His 22-year-old daughter-in-law and her mother also died. His son, a police officer, was in shock and being treated with tranquilizers

"We were going to see our grandchild for the first time," Ceylan said. "It's very hard for us. It's enough to make us go mad."

The dead also included a group of academics who planned to take part in a physics conference at an Isparta university. Among them was Engin Arik, a prominent female nuclear physics professor from Istanbul's Bosporus University.

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