Exactly 15 years ago today, on November 30, 2007, Atlasjet Flight 4203 crashed while on final approach, killing all 57 passengers and crew. Atlasjet Flight 4203 was a regularly scheduled domestic passenger flight between the now defunct Istanbul Atatürk Airport (ISL) and Isparta Süleyman Demirel Airport (ISE) in southwestern Turkey.Atlasjet Flight 4203 route mapThe aircraft involved in the accident was a 13-year-old McDonnell Douglas DC-9-83 (MD-83), which Atlasjet had leased from World Focus Airlines five months earlier. In command of the flight was 48-year-old Captain Muhammet Serhat Özdemir, assisted by First Officer Mehmet Tahir, a former Turkish Air Force pilot. Having only joined World Focus Airlines three months before the deadly crash, Tahir had well below the minimum 100 flying hours on the aircraft type required by Turkish regulations.

The flight had 50 passengers and seven crew members

The flight took off from Istanbul in the early morning hours on November 30, 2007, at 00:51 local time, for the 251 miles flight down to Isparta. The takeoff and climb out of Istanbul was textbook perfect. Twenty-seven minutes into the flight, Captain Özdemir radioed air traffic control (ATC) to say that they were approaching Isparta using VHF omnidirectional range, a short wave radio signal designed to keep the plane on the correct course. Because Isparta Süleyman Demirel Airport (ISE) was a small airport that only handled a limited number of domestic flights it did not have a more sophisticated navigational landing system.

At 01:36 local time, the crew made routine contact with ATC, letting the controllers know they were inbound to the airport. The controllers acknowledged the call, but then the plane crashed into a hill 7.5 miles west of the airport.

The plane was not found for several hours

After the plane failed to land at the time estimated, the controllers contacted other aircraft in the vicinity, asking them to look for Flight 4203. No results were forthcoming, leaving the controllers to declare an emergency and start search and rescue operations. Because it was still night and the terrain was rugged for ground operations, the Turkish Air Force dispatched a helicopter with thermal imaging cameras. At 06:00, the plane's wreckage was spotted on a 6,000-foot mountain 7.5 miles west of the airport. Debris from the crash was spread over a wide area, and it was immediately apparent that there were no survivors.

The district's local government immediately pointed out that the plane was nowhere near where it was supposed to be at the time of the crash. These remarks led Atlasjet's CEO, Tuncay DoÄŸaner, to say that the plane had no mechanical issues and that the crash was due to pilot error.

The investigation into the crash of Atlasjet Flight 4203

Turkey's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (Sivil Havacılık Genel MüdürlüÄŸü, or SHGM) immediately took charge, deploying investigators to the crash site. Both the plane's flight recorders and the cockpit voice recorder were recovered and sent to Germany for analysis. In February of the following year, the Turkish daily newspaper Sabah ran a story saying that reports about the crash did not add up. According to Sabah, the aircraft had been flying without permission on the day of the accident.

Investigators discovered that the plane's ground proximity warning system (GPWS) had not been working correctly and had malfunctioned for at least 85 of the plane's previous 234 flights. Despite Atlasjet knowing that the GPWS needed to be fixed, the fault was never logged in the maintenance book.

In its final report, one year after the accident, investigators concluded that navigational errors by the pilots were to blame. Both the Captain and First Officer had never landed at Isparta before and had got their final approach to the airport wrong.

Love aviation history? Discover more of our stories here