A passenger plane slammed into a wheat field and burst into flames minutes after takeoff Monday in eastern Pakistan. All 45 people on board were killed, officials said. The Fokker F-27 twin-engine aircraft went down on the outskirts of the city of Multan minutes after taking off for Lahore, spiraling in the air before it hit the ground and bursting into flames, witnesses said. "All 41 passengers and four crew members on board the plane have died," said Iftikhar Babar, the district coordination officer for Multan, which lies about 400 miles southwest of the capital, Islamabad.Malik Bashir, Pakistan International Airlines' station manager at Multan airport, said the cause of the crash was not yet known, but ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack on the state carrier's plane. A PIA emergency department official who identified himself by a single name, Bashir, said the dead passengers were all Pakistani. They included two army brigadiers, two judges of the High Court in Lahore and the head of a state-run university in Multan. A female flight attendant who was pulled alive from the plane's wreckage died later at a hospital, airline security official Mohammed Iqbal said.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf expressed grief over the crash and ordered an investigation to determine the cause, state-run Pakistan Television reported.
Chaudhry Bashir, a PIA spokesman, said the plane joined the airline's fleet in 1979. It had flown 49,100 miles and was due to be grounded on completing 55,900 miles. "No PIA plane can come on the runway before it is fully looked after for maintenance," he said.
| What am I missing here? It joined the fleet in 1979. That's 27 years, or 1818 1/2 miles per year, or a little over four flights from Multan to Lahore per year. My truck is two years old and has nearly that many miles on it, though I seldom drive to Lahore. And there's too damned many Bashirs involved for my taste. |