A plane has broken into three pieces after a rough landing at a Turkish airport.
The Pegasus Airlines aircraft skidded off the runway at Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen airport on landing, crashing into a road.
Footage from the incident shows serious damage to the plane’s fuselage, which appears to be cracked in three places.
Authorities said there were 177 passengers and six crew members onboard, but that there were no immediate reports of any casualties.
The jet, flight number PC2193, was arriving from the city of Izmir, on Turkey’s Aegean Coast.
Turkey’s transport ministry said the accident was the result of a “rough landing”.
Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen airport is currently closed and dozens of arrivals and departures have been diverted to Ankara, the capital, or simply cancelled.
Pegasus is the second-biggest airline in Turkey, and has its main hub at Sabiha Gokcen airport on the Asian side of Istanbul. This airport is the Turkish equivalent of Gatwick, and has nearly as busy a runway.
Unusually for a low-cost carrier, Pegasus has a mixed fleet of Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 series aircraft. It also offers connecting flights through its hub, with a wide range of destinations available from Stansted via Istanbul.
In January 2020, an arriving Boeing 737 belonging to Pegasus left the runway at Sabiha Gokcen upon landing, with passengers evacuated from the plane via emergency slides.
The incident closed the airport for several hours, causing dozens of cancellations and diversions.
Source: The Independent
