21 dead in Pakistan plane crash

A charter aircraft carrying staff from an Italian oil company crashed minutes after take-off in Pakistan's business hub of Karachi on Friday, killing all 21 people on board, including an Italian.

The pilot of the twin engine turboprop operated by Pakistani charter JS Air reported engine trouble then nose dived near a military depot in a Karachi suburb and burst into flames, in an accident blamed on a "technical fault".

"The plane has been totally gutted and there are no survivors," Lieutenant Colonel Noor Alam told reporters near the crash site in Gulistan-e-Jauhar.

Television footage showed the aircraft split in two, the front part totally destroyed and the rear section, marked JS Air, torn off alongside two wheels.

"The cause of crash was a technical fault. The pilot reported that one of the engines was not working. Everyone died. There were no survivors," said Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Pervez George.

The 21 people on board were believed to be mostly Pakistanis, although embassies said they were checking to see whether the dead included foreigners.

An Eni company official in Karachi told AFP that the plane had been carrying its employees and that an Italian was among those killed.
The Italian embassy was not immediately reachable for comment, but a diplomatic official also told AFP that an Italian was among the dead.

The US-manufactured Beech 1900 aircraft took off from Jinnah International airport shortly after 7:00 am (0200 GMT) on a 200-kilometre (125-mile) journey to an oil field at Bhit Shah, in the southern province of Sindh.

The pilot contacted air traffic control almost immediately, reporting engine trouble and was given permission to return to the airport. Witnesses were quoted as saying the plane nose dived.

"It caught fire," Alam told reporters near the crash site.

"The bodies of the pilot and co-pilot have not been retrieved so far. We will have to cut the front portion to recover their bodies.

"The bodies were charred. One of my colleagues on the site literally fainted after seeing the bodies," he added.

"Soon after they left, they contacted the airport control tower and said there was a problem in one of the engines. The plane was directed to return and soon after it crashed," said George.

On the doomed aircraft were 17 passengers, one guard, one technician, the pilot and co-pilot, officials said.

Civil Aviation Authority director Mukhtar Butt said the black box data recorder has been found and that an investigation had been ordered into the crash.

"We are waiting for a report from the air worthiness department which checks the plane before take-off," Butt told AFP.
A JS Air representative said the pilot was experienced and the plane adhered to safety standards. Seventeen Eni employees were on board, he said.

"The plane was well maintained. It was fit to fly, it was fit to operate, it left after getting the necessary clearance," Captain Nadeem Hanif told Geo TV.

"It is premature to speculate about the nature of the fault. The investigation has been launched by the civil aviation authorities. We will fully cooperate," he said.

The JS Air website says it operates three Beech 1900C aircraft dating from the early 1990s. It says it offers a "wide-ranging charter business domestically" and flies internationally, operating charters in Sri Lanka.

Karachi is Pakistan's business and economic capital. It is a teeming city of 16 million on the south coast with an Arabian Sea port where NATO supplies dock in preparation for travel overland to soldiers in Afghanistan. Eni has been operating in Pakistan since 2000.

Eni Pakistan is the largest foreign producer in Pakistan's exploration and petroleum sector, according to the Pakistan Petroleum Exploration and Production Companies Association.

Plane crashes are relatively rare in Pakistan, an enormous country of around 170 million people where inter-city travel is most efficient by air.

On July 28, an Airbus 321 passenger jet operated by the private Airblue crashed into hills of the Pakistani capital Islamabad while coming in to land after a flight from Karachi, killing 152 people on board.

Two Americans, an Austrian-born businessman, five children and two babies were among those killed in the worst aviation tragedy on Pakistani soil.

The only deadlier civilian plane crash involving a Pakistani jet occurred when a PIA Airbus A300 crashed into a cloud-covered hillside as it approached the Nepalese capital Kathmandu in 1992, killing 167 people.

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