The miracle seats of Flight PIA 8303: Cabin map shows where engineer and bank manager were sitting when Airbus A320 plowed into houses in Karachi killing 97 other people around them
- Zafar Masud, seat 1C, and Mohammad Zubair, seat 10C, both survived the devastating plane crash in Karachi
- Nineteen of the 97 bodies have been identified and funeral prayers were held for the victims across the city
- Witnesses saw the plane attempt to land up to three times before the crash happened on its fourth attempt
- The captain told air traffic control he had lost one of his engines and made a final desperate mayday call
- Emergency authorities including the military have been deployed in a bid to find survivors
- The plane's pilot Sajjad Gull was the senior most A320 pilot in PIA, with extensive flight experience
- Videos and photos show a wrecked plane door with flaming rubble and debris strewn across the area
A passenger list from the doomed Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A320 has revealed where the two survivors were sitting when the aircraft plowed into a residential neighbourhood in Karachi.
Nineteen of the 97 bodies recovered from the wreckage have been identified and were collected by loved ones for funeral prayers this morning.
Two men survived the devastating crash - President of the Bank of Punjab, Zafar Masud, was sitting in seat 1C, and was filmed being pulled alive from the smoking wreck.
The second survivor, engineer Mohammad Zubair, 24, who was sitting in seat 10C, spoke from his hospital bed in a video clip circulated on social media.
'After it hit and I regained conciousness, I saw fire everywhere and no one was visible,' Zubair said.
'The cries were everywhere and everybody was trying to survive. I undid my seat belt and I saw some light and tried to walk towards it. Then I jumped out.'
The passenger list from the PIA Airbus A320 show that Masud was sitting at the very front of the plane and Zubair was behind the bulkhead, 10 seats back.
Masud suffered fractures but was 'conscious and responding well', the Bank of Punjab said.
The other survivor, engineer Zubair, told Geo News the pilot came down for one landing, briefly touched down, then took off again.
After around 10 more minutes of flying, the pilot announced to passengers he was going to make a second attempt, then crashed as he approached the runway, Zubair said from his bed in Civil Hospital Karachi.
'All I could see around was smoke and fire,' he added. 'I could hear screams from all directions. Kids and adults. All I could see was fire. I couldn't see any people just hear their screams.'
The other 97 passengers and crew are believed to have died.
'Thank you so much. God has been merciful,' Mr Masood, the banker who was in seat 1C said, according to officials who spoke to him in hospital after the crash.
Mourning families were pictured carrying their loved ones from local hospitals for funeral services today, on the morning of Eid - the celebration of the end of Ramadan.
Relatives of Pakistani Army Major Adnan, a victim of plane crash, attend his funeral a day after a passenger plane of state run Pakistan International Airlines, crashed in a residential colony, in Karachi, Pakistan, today
A rescue worker checks bodies of the victims the day after a passenger plane of state run Pakistan International Airlines crashed in a residential area, at a mortuary in Karachi, Pakistan today
People mourn around the body of their relative, who was killed in the Friday's plane crash, at a morgue in Karachi, Pakistan, today. An aviation official says a passenger plane belonging to state-run Pakistan International Airlines carrying passengers and crew has crashed near the southern port city of Karachi
Relatives of a plane crash victim recover the body a day after a passenger plane of state run Pakistan International Airlines crashed on a residential colony in Karachi, Pakistan today
'Eid has become meaningless not only for Karachi but the whole of Pakistan,' said Zia ul Huq Qamar, who lives near the crash site.
Several members of the armed forces who were flying home to their families to celebrate the holiday were among the dead, the military said.
Shahbaz Hussain said his mother, who was also among the victims, had been flying back to Karachi after becoming stranded by the lockdown in Lahore while visiting her daughters.
The University of Karachi is collecting the DNA of the remaining bodies in the hopes of identifying them.
An airline spokesman said today that the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have been recovered and will be handed over to an inquiry board for an investigation.
Witnesses said the flight from Lahore had made three failed attempts to land at Jinnah International Airport before ploughing into the Model Colony area of the city on a fourth landing attempt.
Pakistan's civil aviation authority said the plane had 91 passengers and a crew of seven.
The pilot told air traffic control that he had lost both of his engines and a recording has emerged of the captain making a final mayday call before the crash. The Airbus A320-214 model uses a CFM56 engine made by CFM International, a joint venture between US-based General Electric and France's Safran.
A photo of the aircraft on approach also shows that the landing gear is still up and black scorch marks under each engine.
The air traffic control recording starts after the pilot has already made one failed landing attempt.
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'Confirm your attempt on belly,' the air traffic controller said, offering a runway.
'Sir, mayday, mayday, mayday, mayday Pakistan 8303,' the pilot said before the transmission ended.
Videos uploaded on social media show the plane's final moments as it steadily descends to the shrieks of terrified residents. Witnesses say the plane was so low they felt the walls of their houses tremble and saw the plane tilted on one side.
The A320 can carry up to 180 passengers, depending on how its cabin is configured.
The Sindh provincial government press department later distributed a photo depicting a second survivor identified as Mohammad Zubair, recovering in a Karachi hospital.
In Pakistan there is fevered speculation that model and actress Zara Abid, who has more than 80,000 Instagram followers, was one of the victims but this has not been confirmed.
However, tributes were being paid to her on Twitter by Pakistani fashion designers and actors.
The official statement confirmed two survivors and said that 17 of the bodies had been 'identified so far.'
Earlier the airline's chief executive Arshad Mahmood Malik said in a press conference that only one survivor had been confirmed from the wreckage - the president of the Bank of Punjab, Zafar Masud.
The Airbus had been flying from Lahore to Jinnah, which usually takes 90 minutes, before it went down in the Model Colony area as it began its final approach to land at Karachi airport.
'The last we heard from the pilot was that he has some technical problem,' a PIA spokesman revealed.
'He was told from the final approach that both the runways were ready where he can land, but the pilot decided that he wanted to do (a) go-round... It is a very tragic incident.'
A recording posted on monitoring website liveatc.net reveals the pilot told controllers the plane had lost power from both its engines on its second attempt to land.
As it called off an earlier attempt to land and tried for a second time, a controller radioed the pilot and told him he appeared to be turning left, suggesting he was off-course.
The pilot replied, 'We are returning back, sir, we have lost engines,' and the controller cleared the plane to land on either of Karachi airport's two West-Southwest-facing runways.
Twelve seconds later the pilot cried 'Mayday, Mayday, Mayday' and was again cleared to use either runway.
A resident of the area, Abdul Rahman, said he saw the aircraft circle at least three times, appearing to try and land before it crashed into several houses and caused roofs to cave in.
'The aeroplane first hit a mobile tower and crashed over houses,' witness Shakeel Ahmed said near the site, a few miles short of the airport.
The Sindh provincial health department said it had recovered 57 bodies, while PIA chairman Arshad Malik said finding all the dead could take two to three days.
Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) sources said the captain had reported a technical fault before the plane vanished from the radar.
They told News One that communication with the plane was cut off one minute before it was scheduled to touch down.
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However, airworthiness documents showed the plane last received a government check on Nov. 1, 2019.
PIA's chief engineer signed a separate certificate April 28 saying all maintenance had been conducted. It said 'the aircraft is fully airworthy and meets all the safety' standards.
Seemin Jamali, executive director at the nearby Jinnah Hospital, said 17 dead bodies and six wounded people had been brought in. Three people who were on the ground in the area where the plane crashed were injured.
Rescue workers and local residents pulled people from the debris as firefighters battled to put out the flames.
'I heard a big bang and woke up to people calling for the fire brigade,' said Karachi resident Mudassar Ali.
Teenager Hassan said: I was coming from the mosque when I saw the plane tilting on one side. The engines' sounds were quite weird. It was so low that the walls of my house were trembling.'
CCTV appears to show the moment the plane crashed into the residential area of Karachi
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