By Xinhua
Ankara : A Turkish plane with 54 people aboard crashed in central Turkey early Friday, Turkish private TV channel NTV reported.
According to Semsettin Uzun, Governer of Isparta province of Turkey, there were 49 passengers and five crewmembers on board, and the plane belonged to the private airline company AtlasJetair. It disappeared from radar screens between 1:45 and 02:00 a.m.
Uzun said that passenger plane crashed near Cukuroren village of Keciborlu town in Isparta province of central Turkey, adding that a Turkish fighter plane has found the wreckage.
Airline official Tuncay Doganer said that there was no sign of any survivor.
The plane, heading for Isparta, disappeared from radar screens shortly before it was due to land at the Suleyman Demirel airport, about 150 km north of the Mediterranean resort of Antalya.
A Gulf Air passenger jet with 121 people on board made an emergency landing at the Ataturk airport in Turkey’s largest city Istanbul due to technical problems Nov 21.
Also earlier this month, two Turkish pilots were killed when a military training aircraft crashed in the western city of Izmir.
A Ukrainian plane carrying 75 people, including 62 Spanish peacekeeping soldiers returning home from Afghanistan and 12 crew members, crashed May 26, 2003, near Macka town of northern province of Trabzon in the Black Sea region of Turkey.
In January 2003, 75 people were killed when a RJ-100 plane of the Turkish Airlines crashed at Diyarbakir airport in the southeastern part of Turkey. Five people survived that accident.
In another crash on May 16, 2001, all 37 people on board were killed when a Turkish military cargo plane crashed in eastern Turkey.