PK-661 of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), which was en route to Islamabad from Chitral, crashed near Abbottabad in a village near Havelian on Wednesday. This tragic incident cost us 48 lives, including the crew members and the passengers. These included two foreigners, two infants and the Islamic scholar, businessman and former pop star Khan Junaid Jamshed. This was an ATR-42 turboprop plane and according to PIA's spokesperson Daniyal Gillani the plane was only 10 years old. He claimed that it was in good condition. There have been reports that the plane had a problem in its left engine, which was replaced a week before the flight. It was the same engine which defected mid-air, according to global aviation watchdogs at Herald.
ATR-42 is twin turboprop, short haul regional airliner. The number 42 suggests the number of passengers it can hold. The seats are basically slapped inside. Overall, this airliner is famous for facing turbulence according to the passengers who usually travel in it. It is frequently used for cargo services and is extensively used by many of the cargo companies. It can be related to cheap aspects that the manufacturers brag about on their website – for example, it is cheap to build, cheap to fix and cheap to sell. Countries like us use this bundle of cheapness as passenger planes.
Series ATR-72 and ATR-42 were grounded permanently in the U.S. back in 1992. These series were branded unsafe for passenger travel; in some cases permanent routes were dropped due to its untrustworthiness. These series were declared unfit for flying in icing conditions. ATR series is among the banned airliners in EU. These airliners were never successful and have faced many disastrous ends. There is a long history of crash landings associated with these planes, which have cost many lives. So far the ATR-72 series planes have crashed 15 times from 1994 to 2015. Similarly ATR-42 series was involved in 17 crashes from 1987 to 2016. People who claim that they never heard of any technical problems related to this airliner should read extensively! Or may be give an hour to the history of this airliner, so that incidents like these do not occur anywhere.