PIA plane crashes in Karachi's residential area

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi
(Pakistan News & Features Services)

A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane which was coming from Lahore crashed in Karachi on May 22 with 98 people on board which included seven crew members. 

Flight PK 8303 went down at Jinnah Garden in Model Colony, a residential area in the vicinity of the Jinnah International Airport as the Airbus A-320 plane, carrying 91 passengers and seven crew members, was approaching the runway. 

According to the initial report released by the Sindh health department, 66 people were confirmed to have died as a result of the tragic incident while the list shared by the airlines mentioned that there were 51 men, 31 women and nine children aboard the aircraft. 

The airline officials stated that the pilot had reported technical issues while the witnesses said that the aircraft, flying from Lahore, attempted to land two or three times before hitting a mobile tower and crashing into houses of the densely populated residential area near the airport. 

The Bank of Punjab (BOP), Chief Executive, Zafar Masud, was among the lucky passengers to have survived the crash. He was taken to a nearby hospital for a first-aid from where he was moved to another hospital where his condition was declared stable by the doctors. Later he was visited by the Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah. 

The other fortunate survivor Muhammad Zubair was also found in a stable condition as he appeared in a television interview, narrating the tales of horror of the passengers of the ill-fated plane.