Pegasus Airlines on Thursday morning confirmed three people died in yesterday's accident when one of its aircraft overran the end of the runway and broke in three pieces after landing at Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen Airport (SAW) at 15:19 UTC. In a statement on its website, the Turkish low-cost carrier said: “Pegasus Airlines is deeply saddened to confirm that following the accident on 5 February 2020 involving Pegasus Airlines Flight PC 2193, on a TC-IZK-registered Pegasus Airlines aircraft, flying from Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport to Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen Airport, there have now been three fatalities, as confirmed by official sources.” The airline did not specify whether the fatalities are passengers or crew.
Late Wednesday evening, Turkey’s health ministry reported one person was killed in the incident while the operator’s initial statement following the accident mentioned there had been no fatalities.
Flight PC 2193, operated with a Boeing 737-800, had 177 passengers and six crew on board when it landed on Runway 06 in bad weather. The aircraft failed to come to a stop on the runway, went down an embankment and came to rest about 20 meters (66 feet) below runway elevation, breaking in three, according to the Flight Safety Foundation’s Aviation Safety Network (ASN). It touched down about 1,950 meters (6,400 feet) past the runway’s threshold, about 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) before the runway end, at about 130 knots groundspeed, the Aviation Herald reported, citing mode-S data transmitted by the aircraft. The aircraft overran the end of the runway at about 63 knots. Runway 06 is a concrete runway with a landing distance available (LDA) of 3,000 meters.
Air traffic control cleared Flight 2193 to land on Runway 06 “with wind information given as 270 degrees at 22 knots, gusting to 30 knots. This translates to a 19-knot tailwind [component],” ASN noted.
The aircraft, registered as TC-IZK, was built in 2009. It entered commercial service with now-defunct Air Berlin and returned to lessor SMBC Capital in Ireland in April 2016. One month later, it joined the Pegasus group fleet. Pegasus’s fleet consists of 46 Boeing 737-800s, one 737-400, 24 Airbus A322s, and 12 A320neos.
The February 5 accident is the airline’s second runway excursion incident in 2020 and its third in the past two years. On January 7, a Pegasus 737-800 skidded off SAW’s Runway 06 and came to a stop with all gear on soft ground about 1,000 meters down the runway. There were no casualties. In January 2018, one of its 737-800s suffered a runway excursion after landing on Runway 11 at Trabzon Airport, Turkey. The aircraft went off the left side of the runway and went down a steep slope, coming to rest with the tail sticking out about five meters above runway level, ASN data show. The number-two engine broke away in the slide and fell into the sea. There were no casualties.
Pegasus Airlines is on IATA’s Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) registry.
The airline did not reply to an AIN query as to whether the analysis of the past excursions had determined the causes of the runway overruns. The spokesperson also did not provide details about the flight hours and nationality of the pilots, noting that the airline’s CEO Mehmet Tevfik Nane held a press conference in Istanbul earlier today. “We will be sharing its English transcript as soon as available.”