Airliner Missing in Pakistan; 54 Aboard
Rain and darkness forced rescuers to postpone their search Friday for a passenger plane that disappeared over Pakistan’s rugged northern mountains with 54 people aboard.
The Pakistan International Airlines Fokker-27 took off early Friday on what should have been a 45-minute flight from the Karakoram Mountain city of Gilgit to Islamabad.
“The pilot of the missing plane made a routine call seven minutes after takeoff. There was nothing after that, nothing at all to indicate the plane was in trouble,” said Azra Sultan, an airline spokeswoman.
The airline’s chief pilot, who uses the single name Khizar, said the twin-engine plane carried 49 passengers, including five infants, and five crew members.
Most of the passengers were Pakistanis, but Sultan said the list included an American, Paul McGorrian, a former staff writer at the Times in St. Petersburg, Fla. McGorrian was doing free-lance work in Pakistan for the St. Petersburg paper and other publications.
Two Pakistani air force C-130 aircraft, helicopters and a small airline search plane scanned the Himalaya and Karakoram mountains for signs of the plane until darkness and bad weather forced them to wait until today.
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