Flights resume at Istanbul airport after plane crash kills 3

Rescue members evacuate an injured person from the wreckage of a plane after it skidded off the runway at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen Airport, in Istanbul, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2020. The plane skidded off as it tried to land in bad weather, crashing into a field and breaking into pieces. Passengers had to evacuate through cracks in the smashed plane and authorities said 120 people were sent to the hospital with injuries. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

ISTANBUL — Flights resumed Thursday at an Istanbul airport after a Turkish airliner skidded off a runway, killing three people and injuring 180 others.

Sabiha Gokcen Airport restarted operations at around 4 a.m. (0100 GMT) though delays and cancellations continued.

On Wednesday evening, a Boeing 737 operated by low-cost Pegasus Airline landed from Izmir on Turkey’s western coast during strong winds and heavy rain and overshot the runway. It skidded about 50 to 60 meters (165 to 200 feet) before it dropped into the ditch from a height of about 30 meters (98 feet), according to the city’s governor, Ali Yerlikaya.

The plane, carrying 177 passengers and six crew members, broke up into three parts upon impact. The plane was 11 years old, according to the flight-tracking website Flightradar24.

Yerlikaya, speaking early Thursday, said all those injured were stable and four people showed “medium” injury levels.
The passengers included 22 people from 12 countries.

Pegasus Airlines changed its logo on Twitter to a blackened version in a sign of mourning, and said its “priority is to support the relatives and friends who have lost loved ones.” The company is majority-owned by Turkish billionaire Sevket Sabanci and his family, with 34.5% of shares floating in stock exchange Borsa Istanbul. Its fleet of 83 planes flies to more than 100 destinations.
Police guarded the wreckage Thursday morning.

Another Pegasus Airlines plane skidded off the runway at the same airport in Istanbul on Jan. 7, causing the temporary closure of the airport. There were no injuries.

In January 2018, another Boeing 737 in the Pegasus fleet slid off a runway at Trabzon Airport in northeastern Turkey. The plane came to rest in the dirt above the Black Sea with its nose pointed toward the water. No one was injured.