Plane Skids Off Runway, Then Dangles Over Cliff
A plane carrying 168 people skidded off a runway in northern Turkey Saturday night, stopping on a muddy slope just above the Black Sea.
None of the passengers or crew members on the Pegasus Airlines flight were hurt as a result of the unexpected detour off the runway at the Trabzon Airport in the city of Trabzon.
Photos of the incident show the commercial plane sitting halfway down a cliff off the runway and above the Black Sea. A government agency is investigating the incident to learn how and why the plane left the runway, according to the Associated Press.
Passenger Fatma Gordu told a local news agency that the plane "swerved all of a sudden."
"The front of the plane crashed and the back was in the air," she said, according to the AP. "Everyone panicked."
In a statement, Pegasus Airlines said the Boeing 737-800 aircraft "had a Runway Excursion Incident." The flight had taken off from Ankara, Turkey's capital.
Videos of the incident shared on social media showed passengers being evacuated from the plane. Another photo showed one of the plane's engines floating below in the Black Sea.
"It's a miracle we escaped," Yuksel Gordu, a passenger on the plane, told a local news agency, according to the AP. "We could have burned, exploded, flown into the sea. Thank God for this. I feel like I'm going crazy when I think about it."
