At least three people are dead after a Pegasus Airlines plane split in half after skidding off the landing strip at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen Airport in Turkey.
In addition to the three people killed in the crash, 179 more were taken to the hospital with injuries. Video shows the Boeing 737 broken up into three pieces and the wreckage on fire.
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The plane was flying from the Aegean port city of Izmir, and Turkish television broadcast video of passengers climbing out of a large crack in the airplane, which attempted to land in heavy wind and rain.
Boeing has faced fierce scrutiny and struggled financially after two Boeing 737 Maxs crashed due to technical faults in the plane’s anti-stalling system. The aviation company fired CEO Dennis Muilenburg late last year after a string of incidents with the 737 Max airliner caused chaos at Boeing.
Survivor Dogus Bilgic, 24, who has a leg injury, said that he escaped the jet through a gap near his seat.
“We traveled [on the runway] for some 20 or 30 seconds, then all of a sudden, we flew off the runway,” he said. “It happened in seconds.”
“The front [of the plane] was in a terrible state. I saw, after I was on the ground, that it had completely broken apart,” Bilgic said. “It was complete chaos.”
Federal Aviation Administration analysts said it was “clear from the beginning” that the planes were accident-prone, and President Trump grounded the fleet in March 2019.
“We are deeply saddened … [But] we are very happy that we escaped a greater accident,” Istanbul Gov. Ali Yerlikaya said, noting that the jet could have burst into flames.
