TURKEY/US: A Turkish Airlines passenger plane crashed in thick fog and burst into flames as it tried to land in southeast Turkey yesterday killing at least 74 people.
Just hours before a US commuter plane crashed and exploded shortly after takeoff from Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, killing all 21 people on board.
The Turkish aircraft, a Boeing RJ 100 with seating capacity of 99, crashed into a military zone next to the city's airport at around 8.30 p.m.. It was one of two daily flights between Istanbul and Diyarbakir in south east Turkey.
There are reported to have been 80 people on board, including 5 crew members. Though most of the passengers were Turkish citizens, it has also officially been confirmed that an American and an Iraqi were among the dead.
Speaking at a press conference an hour and a half after the crash, Turkey's transport minister Mr Binali Yildirim blamed the accident on the thick fog that had been blanketing the region since the beginning of the week.
Visibility, he said, had been down to 2 kilometres since Monday, and there had been delays on all civilian flights.
He added that he and Interior Minister Mr Abdulkadir Aksu would be flying down to the scene of the accident from Ankara later in the evening.
Immediately following the crash, the six survivors were taken to two local hospitals. According to doctors, three of them are in serious condition.
The others were reportedly able to tell investigators that problems only began as the plane prepared to land.
None had any clear memory of the moment of impact.
Eyewitnesses at the airport describe how the plane exploded instantly as it crashed nose-first into a military area near the foot of the main civilian runway.
Though rescuers have succeeded in putting out the flames and finding one of the plane's two black boxes, the gruelling job of identifying victims has been hampered by the fact that many passengers have been burned beyond recognition.
Speaking on CNN-Turk, aviation expert Mr Ugur Cebeci said that this was the third time an RJ 100 had crashed in Turkey, but the first time there had been casualties.
He also added that Diyarbakir control tower had no ISF homing device to assist pilots landing in poor visibility.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina the commuter plane crashed when it clipped the corner of a US Airways hangar on the airport grounds and burst into flame.
The Beech 1900 turboprop plane, US Airways Express Flight 5481 operated by Air Midwest, was headed to nearby Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina.
The twin-engine plane carried 19 passengers and two crew members, airport director Mr Jerry Orr told a news conference.
"There were no survivors," he said.
Three workers on the ground were initially reported missing but were later accounted for and no one in the hangar was hurt, he said.
The last known radio contact with the plane was its clearance for takeoff and there was no indication from air traffic control of any problems at that time, aviation officials said.
Witnesses told reporters the plane had just taken off when it appeared to circle back toward the airport. It burst into flames when it crashed shortly before 4pm Irish time, sending a thick cloud of smoke over the field.
Fire crews doused the flames with foam and charred wreckage could be seen in a 100-foot-long (30-metre) area of debris just outside the hangar.
It was the first commercial air crash in the United States since an American Airlines jet crashed in November 2001 in New York, killing all 260 people on board and five on the ground.
The crash temporarily shut down operations at Charlotte's main international airfield, leaving a host of planes lined up on the tarmac.
Air Midwest is a regional carrier that runs connecting flights from major hubs to smaller cities. It operates as various airlines including US Airways Express, Frontier JetExpress, America West Express and Mesa Airlines. - (Additional Reporting Reuters)