Atlasjet Flight 4203

Atlasjet Flight 4203

The aircraft involved in the accident is seen taxiing at Warsaw Chopin Airport in August 2007.
Crash
Date	30 November 2007
Summary	Controlled flight into terrain, pilot error
Site	Türbetepe, Keçiborlu, Isparta Province, Turkey 37°52′24″N 30°12′07″E
Aircraft type	McDonnell Douglas MD-83
Operator	Atlasjet
Registration	TC-AKM
Flight origin	Istanbul Atatürk Airport, Istanbul, Turkey
Destination	Isparta Süleyman Demirel Airport, Isparta Province, Turkey
Passengers	50
Crew	7
Fatalities	57
Survivors	0

LTBA

LTFC

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Location of departure (LTBA) and destination (LTFC) airports

Atlasjet Flight 4203 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Istanbul Atatürk Airport in Istanbul to Isparta Süleyman Demirel Airport in Isparta Province, Turkey. On 30 November 2007, the aircraft operating the flight crashed in the vicinity of Keçiborlu between the villages of Yenitepe and Çukurören while on approach, approximately 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) west of the destination airport. The flight had taken off from Istanbul at 00:51 EET with 50 passengers and 7 crew members on board. All 57 occupants perished in the accident.

The aircraft operating flight 4203 was a 1994-built McDonnell Douglas MD-83 which Atlasjet had leased from World Focus Airlines just three months prior to the crash.

Background

Aircraft

The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 that operated flight 4203 was built in 1994 with serial number 53185 and was equipped with two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-219 engines.

The aircraft had initially been deployed to service at Reno Air from 1994 to 1999, after which it was transferred to American Airlines' fleet where it served until 2001. Subsequently, Turkish charter airline Freebird Airlines has acquired the aircraft and operated it between 2001 and 2005. Finally, World Focus Airlines acquired the aircraft in 2005. Having also been leased to Turkish Airlines while in the possession of World Focus Airlines, the American-made aircraft was leased to Atlasjet in July 2007 and was registered as TC-AKM.

Crew

The aircrew consisted of two pilots, one technician and four flight attendants. Captain Serhat Özdemir, aged 48, was the pilot flying the aircraft. Tahir Aksoy, a former Turkish Air Force pilot, was the first officer. He had joined World Focus Airlines just three months prior to the crash and had accumulated just around 14 hours on the MD-83 which was well below the minimum 100 hours required by Turkish regulations. Of the seven crew members, three flight attendants were Atlasjet employees, both pilots, the technician and one flight attendant were employed by World Focus Airlines.

Passengers

All 50 passengers of whom one was a six-week-old baby were Turkish citizens. Among those on board was renowned nuclear physicist Prof. Dr. Engin Arik. She was joined by five other scientists about to attend a conference at Süleyman Demirel University in Isparta regarding the Turkish Accelerator Center Project. The six scientists were employed at different universities across Turkey and had decisive roles in the project. Prof. Arik was also working for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in the ATLAS and CAST experiments.

All passengers and crew members on board were killed by the accident.

Crash

Flight 4203 lifted off from Istanbul Atatürk Airport in the early hours of 30 November 2007 at 00:51 Eastern European Time (EET) (22:51 UTC on 29 November) destined for Isparta Süleyman Demirel Airport in Isparta Province in southwestern Turkey. Twenty-seven minutes into the flight, Captain Özdemir told air traffic control (ATC) that they were approaching Isparta Airport using VHF omnidirectional range (a type of short-range radio navigation system which enables aircraft with a receiving unit to determine their position and stay on course). At 01:36 EET, the crew made its last routine contact with ATC, telling that they "have become inbound". Air traffic control acknowledged the message after which communications with the crew was lost without any indication of abnormalities.

Immediate Response

After the flight's estimated time of arrival had passed and with still no sign of the aircraft's fate, ATC officially declared the aircraft missing and search and rescue efforts led by the Turkish Gendarmerie were initiated. Due to the prevalent darkness and the mountainous terrain, ground operations have proved difficult so the Turkish Air Force dispatched a helicopter to scour the presumed crash site with thermal cameras in order to locate the aircraft. In the early morning hours at around 06:00 EET, the wreckage was located by the helicopter on the 1,830 metres (6,000 ft) tall Türbetepe hill, some 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) west of the airport and 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) southwest of the town of Keçiborlu. All other search and rescue teams including a police helicopter and the Ambulance were immediately directed to that site. Upon arrival however, there were no survivors among the 57 occupants. The debris-field spanned across a 5,000 square metres (54,000 sq ft) large area. Initial remarks by the Isparta governor Şemsettin Uzun drew the attention to the site where the aircraft came to rest, which he declared did not correspond with the official flight path implying that the flight should never actually have been anywhere near the site where it came down.

Investigation

The investigation into the accident was led by Turkey's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) which immediately deployed a team of four investigators to the crash site. Both flight recorders, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR) were recovered in the following afternoon and were subsequently sent to Germany for analysis.

Although the aircraft was equipped with a ground proximity warning system (GPWS) which alerts the pilots if their aircraft is in immediate danger of flying into the ground or an obstacle, the investigators determined that it had been malfunctioning during at least 85 of the last 234 flights of the aircraft. The unit was previously fitted in Atlasjet's other MD-83 aircraft (registered TC-AKN) but it had been switched a week prior to the accident. Although the malfunction of the GPWS unit was beknown to the airline and the DGCA, it was not properly logged in order to go undetected.

Contrary to intial reports, which stated that both flight recorders have been successfully read-out, the flight recorders which the aircraft was equipped with were determined to be non-analyzable because the CVR was inoperative for the past nine days leading up to the crash and the FDR was found to have only recorded the first 14 minutes of the flight after which it mysteriously stopped recording at around 01:05 EET.

Since analysis of the CVR and FDR was impossible, investigators turned their attention to radar recordings which indicated that the doomed flight was approaching Isparta Airport at its intended flight path heading southwest, south of the airport and parallel to the runway and descended to 2,600 metres (8,500 ft). After this stage, the aircraft was supposed to turn around 180 degrees to the right and align with runway 05 for the final approach. However as it turned to towards the runway, the aircraft deviated from its flight path by 30 degrees and ended up flying away from the runway towards the north instead of northeast. Assuming they were on course, the crew descended further but a short time later struck the1,830 metres (6,000 ft) tall Türbetepe hill.

Weather was instantly ruled out as a possible cause as the weather conditions were good and visibility was not limited at the time of the accident. Investigators also determined that the engines were operating at the time of the collision with terrain, that the landing gear and flaps were deployed properly, that there was no fire, neither pre-crash nor post-crash and that the crew's alcohol and drug tests returned negative results.
So many uncertainties arose as to what may have contributed to or caused the accident. Because the site where the aircraft came to rest did verifiably not correspond with the official flight path – the flight ended up to the northwest of the airport whereas it was approaching it from the south – and the ATC's account that the crew neither requested a deviation nor declared any other inconvenice such as an emergency, it was quickly determined that there was some kind of navigational error.

The final report was released in November 2008, one year after the crash. It was determined that the accident was caused by pilot error as a result of the condition known as spatial disorientation. The Turkish Transport minister Binali Yıldırım stated that the crash was a “normal controlled flight into terrain by the fault of the crew.” The report states that the GPWS was not able to produce audible alarms due to a defect. Both the captain and the first officer were rather inexperienced and it was their first approach to Isparta. They did neither enter the Standard Instrument Departure of Istanbul nor the Standard Terminal Arrival Route and approach procedure of Isparta into the flight management system.

Aftermath

On 3 December 2007, the provincial council of Isparta decided to erect a mausoleum near the crash site to honour the victims.

In February 2008, World Focus Airlines changed its corporate image to "Ankair" as a result of publicity surrounding the crash. Its operating license was suspended by Turkish authorities a short time later.

In October 2011, the head of the investigation team, Feridun Seren, was arrested along with six other defendants in connection with the disputed 2009 Medair Bell 206 crash which killed BBP leader Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu – in whose investigation he was also involved – on grounds of allowing the flight recorders to be tampered with, obscuring evidence and creating bogus protocols.

Lawsuit

The lawsuit into the crash was launched in December 2009 at the Isparta 1st Heavy Penal Court. The court announced its final decision around five years later in January 2015: World Focus Airlines' owner Yavuz Çizmeci was found guilty of first degree for allowing an aircraft unfit to fly and with known maintenance faults to be leased out, World Focus Airlines' chief executive officer Aydın Kızıltan and technical chief İsmail Taşdelen were found guilty of second degree for the identical reason. All three defendants were collectively sentenced with 11 years and 8 months in prison for negligent homicide. World Focus Airlines' maintenance chief Fikri Zafer Dinçer was also sentenced with 5 years and 10 months in prison for negligent homicide. Former DGCA general manager Ali Arıduru and assistant general manager Oktay Erdağı were sentenced to 1 year and 8 months in prison for malpractice.

The Court of Cassation's 12th Criminal Chamber ratified the Heavy Penal Courts decision in March 2016.

In late July 2016, in a surprise twist, all members of the Court of Cassation's 12th Criminal Chamber and a majority of the members of the 1st Heavy Penal Court who had all been involved in the conviction of the defendants were detained after the failed 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt in the scope of the ensuing purges on grounds of alleged connections with the shadowy Gülen movement.