A Turkish cargo plane trying to land in dense fog crashed Monday morning near Kyrgyzstan’s main airport, killing 37 people – including entire families of a village struck by the jet, authorities said.
The ACT Airlines Boeing 747 crashed just outside the Manas airport, south of the capital Bishkek, on its way from Hong Kong to Istanbul, airport officials told Reuters.
“According to preliminary information, the plane crashed due to a pilot error,” Deputy Prime Minister Muhammetkaly Abulgaziev said on state TV, Agence France-Presse reported.
Russian broadcaster NTV said: “The pilot tried to make a second landing attempt but failed to climb.”
The aircraft plowed on for a few hundred yards through the Dacha-Suu village, home to hundreds of families, shattering into pieces and destroying buildings. The victims included 12 children, officials said.
A 9-year-old boy who ran home from school found that his entire family was killed in the disaster, the Mirror of the UK reported.
The torn-off tail assembly ended up upside down – lodged into a one-story house – and twisted pieces of the mangled jet were strewn across a football field-sized area of the devastated village.
Injured victim Baktygul Kubatova told AKIpress that his house collapsed as his family slept.
“I was worrying about my children, that they could die,” he said, The Sun reported. “I woke up after I saw something red in the window. I had no time to realize what happened. … With fear, I covered my son with my hand to protect him from the ruins. My daughter received injuries, as she was sleeping near the window, while me and my son were sleeping on the floor.”
Tajikan, who identified herself only by her first name, told AFP she heard a roar and felt what felt like an earthquake.
“Many people were sleeping, everything around was burning. One of the parts of the aircraft fell on our neighbor’s house. She and her whole family died,” the pensioner said.
Meanwhile, local media reported that looters plundered through the village –with one man held by police for stealing two kettles, the Mirror reported.
ACT Airlines said in a statement that it was “deeply saddened” by the crash of its Boeing 747-400, noting that “the cause of the accident is unknown.”
Boeing extended its “deepest condolences” over the crash and offered to assist Kyrgyz authorities with the investigation, AFP reported.
Bishkek transportation official Marat Amankulovso said the jet was approaching the runway from the east, The Sun reported.
“At the landing it didn’t come down on the runway, flew over it, its fuselage touched the fence and after that it crashed,” he said. “It is hard to say whether the fog affected the situation. We are told that all the standards were met, and that planes were landing in the same conditions earlier.”
The captain was identified as Ibrahum Gurcan Diranci, a former military pilot in Turkey, the paper reported.
He was previously involved in an emergency landing of an ACT Airlines plane at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2010. A landing gear fault caused by poor maintenance was blamed in the incident.
Prime Minister Sooronbai Jeenbekov was heading a government commission to investigate the Monday crash and the country’s state prosecutor also opened a probe.
President Almazbek Atambayev canceled his visit to China to return to Bishkek, according to Kyrgyz media.