(Updated at 1:15 am EST on December 8)
Authorities have confirmed that all 47 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines ATR 42-500 that crashed into a mountainside near Abbottabad in northern Pakistan Wednesday have died, according to airline chairman Azam Sehgal. Search crews found the missing turboprop in a remote area where aircraft maker ATR had reported the airplane went down during a scheduled flight between Chitral, near the Afghan boarder, and Islamabad at around 4:30 p.m. local time.
Sehgal told a press conference that PIA "came to know" that one of the aircraft's two Pratt & Whitney Canada PW127E engines had developed a fault, without providing further information. He said that the flight data recorder was recovered from the crash scene. The aircraft, which was built in 2007 underwent an airworthiness check in October.
A Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority spokesman told AIN that the airplane had gone missing some 40 miles north of Islamabad. At the time search crews had not yet found any wreckage. However, at around 5 p.m. Radio Pakistan reported that crews had found the wrecked aircraft, operating as Flight PK-661, and had begun recovering charred bodies and tranferring them to a local hospital. As of early on Friday, they had recovered all 47 bodies.