New details have come to light about the crash of a single-engine M20J civil aircraft that took off from Eskişehir and went down en route to the Kaçkar Mountains, located on the Rize-Erzurum border.
Ali Yılmaz, a mountaineer who was part of the 16-person search and rescue team that reached the crash site together with the Gendarmerie Search and Rescue (JAK) teams, shared what happened at the scene and relayed the injured passenger’s statements. Yılmaz said that the passenger had warned the pilot just before the crash and that the survivor remained conscious during the fall.
According to Yılmaz, the surviving passenger was trapped inside the wreckage of the aircraft for hours after the crash. “The only thing that kept the injured person alive was being inside the plane,” Yılmaz said, noting that staying inside despite the harsh weather conditions helped the survivor avoid hypothermia.
The search and rescue operation, launched immediately after the crash, was successfully completed despite the challenging mountain conditions. An official investigation into the incident is ongoing, with inquiries focusing on flight safety and potential pilot errors.
