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. The McDonnell Douglas MD-83, carrying 50 passengers and seven crew members, took off from Istanbul around 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 at about 7 a.m., and reported no survivors, Tuncay Doganer, the airline's chief executive, said, according to the AP. The aircraft 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 conveyed. According to him, the cause of the crash was unknown, but ruled out technical failure and said the weather and visibility were good.
