Adil Najam
(Note: A full list of passengers on the plane and a phone number where more information can be obtained is available here).
There is little except words of condolence and silent prayers that one can offer to those who have lost their loved ones in the fatal crash of Airblue flight ABQ-202. They will have to live with the loss and the agony forever. Our words will change little, but they are one way to cope with the cold chill that runs down one’s spine as one reads the details of what happened in the skies over Margalla Hills..
In the four plus years we have run this blog, we have had to do too much mourning of Pakistanis dying needlessly.One of the very first times we had to write such a post was of another plane crash – PIA’s Fokker crash in July 2006 that killed 45. Since then it has been needless dying galore of Pakistanis.
The pain gets into the very marrow of the bones of all of us. But it never becomes less painful. You never get used to it. Each time is like a ton of bricks hitting you. Then, something like this happens and it hurts even more. Maybe, because there is no one to lash out against. All you can do is to offer words of condolence and silent prayers to those who have lost their loved ones. You know the words will change nothing, but you hope they will offer some solace in solidarity to the grieved, and maybe some little venting to your own pain.
The news is now known to all. There were no survivors. Here are some details from Dawn:
There were no survivors from the Airblue passenger plane that crashed in the Margalla Hills in Islamabad on Wednesday, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said. “There are no survivors. We believe all are dead. We are recovering the remains of the dead bodies from the wreckage,” Imtiaz Elahi, chairman of Islamabad’s Capital Development Authority told Reuters. Elahi said earlier reports of five survivors from the crash were wrong and that all 152 on board the plane were killed. Meanwhile, the city’s police chief said rescue workers had recovered dead bodies of more than 100 people from the wreckage of the plane. “More than 100 bodies have been found. We have not yet found any survivor or injured,” Bani Amin Khan told AFP. “The search is continuing,” he added. Meanwhile, the plane’s black box was also recovered, the Civil Aviation Authority said.
… “I along with four other police and rescue officials reached the crash site. The debris of the plane was scattered there in raging fire. The plane had struck a ridge which fell on the wreckage,” official Arshad Javed said. “All we could see were charred hands or feet. I collected two heads, two legs and two hands in a bag.” The plane was flying from Karachi to Islamabad and the exact cause of the crash was not immediately clear. The aircraft had lost contact with the control tower during the crash which occurred amid thick fog and heavy rainfall in Islamabad. Guards with the forestry service said they had found some wreckage and seen some bodies, police official Mohammad Saeed said. The army said it was sending special troops to the area to help out along with helicopters.
… One Saqlain Altaf told a private television news channel that he was on a family outing in the hills when he saw the plane, looking unsteady in the air. ”The plane had lost balance, and then we saw it going down,” he said, adding he heard the crash. Thick clouds of smoke were rising from the Margalla Hills. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ordered authorities to control the fire immediately and rescue passengers. The government declared a day of national mourning and called off a cabinet meeting that was scheduled for today.
… Raheel Ahmed, a spokesman for Airblue, said an investigation would be launched, but that for now the focus was to find survivors. The plane was no more than eight years old, and it had no known technical issues, Ahmed said. He added that to his knowledge, the pilots had not sent any emergency signals. Airblue flies within Pakistan as well as internationally to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and the United Kingdom. The only previous recorded accident for Airblue, a carrier that began flying in 2004, was a tailstrike in May 2008 at Quetta airport by one of the airline’s Airbus 321 jets.
… There were no casualties and damage was minimal, according to the US-based Aviation Safety Network.
The airliner began operations in 2004 with a fleet of Airbus A320 and A321 aircraft, the company said on its website. The plane that crashed on Wednesday was also built by Airbus, the European planemaker said. “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,” Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath said. According to the latest available data published by Airbus, Airblue operates six aircraft from its A320 family of short-haul and medium-haul aircraft seating up to 185 passengers.
Deep condolences for the affected families.
It is a horrific tragedy and terrible loss.
My question: Could it be that the plane was shot down?
I mean it crashed within 4 miles of the national assembly, the presidency, the proposed GHQ, the Air headquarter and smack in the middle of the “No-Fly Zone”?
Could it be that the plane was shot-down. Those of us who have hiked up the Margalla Hills know that the hills are swarming with military personnel and equipment.
So many people are getting involved in infighting and demolishing each others’ theories about the crash. Everyone has the right to express one’s opinion so who are you to disparage their remarks? Get a life.
I live pretty close to the crash site but unlike others, I didn’t see the plane. I was talking on the phone out in the open and it was only drizzling, there were no massive showers or thunderstorms as some have suggested.
So it’s up to the investigation authorities to find out the root cause but one can almost always conclude that the report will never be made public as is the case in Pakistan. The confusion around the discovery of black box or the lack of it has already sparked some new conspiracy theories.
I came to know about this horrific tragedy within an hour of the incident and saw this whole tragedy unfolding while glued to TV watching Pakistani channels Express, Geo, and many others for straight 4-5 hours.
Kudos to all the rescue workers and people at front for putting their lives @ risk but I was totally shocked about how our institutions and government dealt with this crisis. There was utter chaos, miscommunication, rumors and irresponsibilty at higher level. With all what has been happening in Pakistan lately, we should have been prepared way better.
This is a wakeup call for everyone.
Rumor 1
First of all one won’t expect such a stupid mistake from cabinet ministers saying that there are 5-8 survivors. This irresponsible comment lengthened the agony of the families to an unprecedented level
Then no one could verify or deny this information at any level including CDA, CAA, Police, Airblue and DMG on top of that another rumor
Rumor 2
that ambulances have started bringing dead bodies and injured people. But actually there was no sign of that and one TV channel was saying its only 30min drive from where the ambulances are bringing people. Again nobody was verifying… accepting or denying that ambulances left from the scene for hospitals including all the above depts.
Rumor 3:
The ambulances are arriving at atleast four different hospitals if not more.
This caused such a pain and agony for all families and friends
The families and relatives were running between PIM and other hospitals for 4-5hours to check if anyone survived. It was so bad that some even flew from khi to isb to check if anyone survived.
It took six hours for the stupid minister to end this agony by saying who could survive such a crash.
I was close to the crash site as my place is near to Margalla hills with direct view to crash site. The plane was flying quite low, with a stable trajectory, but it seemed pilot had no clue of where they were headed. There seemed to be a sudden throttle burst from engines which made the aircraft sound different just a couple of seconds before there was a loud explosion, and it appears that pilot did try to pull up when he got the GPWS warning, and probably the belly of the plane clipped the hills.
Let’s not forget that there are radio frequency jammers in the vicinity of Islamabad especially in the no fly zone. Add it in with low hanging clouds, and pilots disorientation of direction, and it could be difficult to figure out where you are headed in a few minutes time. An aircraft traveling at 300 Km/Hr speed just needs a couple of minutes to cover 10 NM, which is the distance from the runway to Margalla Hills, and before you know it you are heading straight for the hills. Infact, on a clear day, you can actually see planes landing on the airport from Daman-e-Koh, so the airport doesn’t appear to be much far.
There are a million things that could go wrong, and although the chance of failure in planes is pretty low, but it does happen. Many aircraft accidents are usually a chain of errors that start from a seemingly innocuous event. In this case suppose you have visual site of the runway, you are about to land and suddenly you lose site of it because of clouds, and you are focused looking for it. And when you are too busy finding the runway, you hardly notice how quickly minutes have passed. Before you know it, your instruments stop working, and before you even try to figure out what went wrong, and are under the impression that everything is under control , in a few seconds, you see hills in front of you.
That could be one of the likely chain of events. Infact the pilot who landed 30 minutes before the doomed aircraft cited that he had great trouble in locating the airport and he considered the weather to be really bad for landing. Also there has been a previous event like this with Thai 601 , and this incident looks remarkably similar to that.
Eventually, to get objective assessment, the authorities need to recover the black box, and the government needs to do transparent investigation and not make this a mystery like previous disasters have been made “in the best interest of the country”.
Recovering the black box, and investigating the results from it is very important, and so is gathering vital clues from crash site so future incidents like this could be avoided.
Deep condolences for the affected families