Search for Afghan jet called off
Americans, Russians, Dutch among those on Afghan airliner
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Bad weather forced rescuers to call off their search for a missing Afghan passenger jet with 104 people aboard that went missing near Kabul during a snow storm a day earlier.
Three American women who work for a Massachusetts-based company were believed to be on the flight, an official with that company said.
The search for the Kam Air flight began Friday morning, according to Afghanistan's transport minister Enayatullah Qasemi.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is heading the effort, Qasemi said. ISAF was using an unmanned video drone to help search for any possible wreckage, and Apache and Black Hawk helicopters were scouring the mountainous region.
"The last time that we have been told that the aircraft was seen on radar was about 3.1 miles east of Kabul," Qasemi said at a news conference Friday.
The Afghan capital sits on a high plateau and is ringed by mountain peaks. Flights are often canceled during the winter due to poor visibility and Kabul's airport does not have advanced radar technology that could help pilots land in bad weather.
The flight from Herat in western Afghanistan was scheduled to land in Kabul Thursday afternoon. Local media reports residents east of Kabul in the community of Butkhak heard a loud explosion about the time the jetliner went missing.
Airline President Zimarai Kamgar said the crew consisted of six Russians and two Afghans. Ninety-six passengers were on board. He said seven were foreigners, however Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office said nine Turkish nationals were among the passengers.
An official with Management Sciences for Health of Cambridge, Mass. said three American women employed by the company were on the Boeing 737.
A man working for a Dutch engineering company was also believed to be on the flight.
The Afghan capital sits on a high plateau and is ringed by tall mountain peaks. Flights are often canceled during the winter due to poor visibility and Kabul's airport does not have advanced radar technology that could help pilots land in bad weather.
According to Qasemi, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is heading the search effort for the Kam Air flight. ISAF is using an unmanned video drone to help search for any possible wreckage.
'No contact'
Pakistani aviation officials said the plane had never made any contact.
Jehangir Khan, operations director of Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority, said Afghan authorities contacted Pakistan at about 4:50 p.m. Pakistan time (1150 GMT) regarding the missing aircraft, but it had not entered Pakistani air space.
"I can confirm that no request was ever made by any captain of any Afghan aircraft to land at any airport in Pakistan," he told Reuters.
"No Afghan aircraft has entered our airspace, we have also checked with defense authorities and all said no plane entered."
A spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan said the plane had been reported missing to them. It had not landed at any U.S.-led coalition airfields in Afghanistan.
Kam Air opened as Afghanistan's only private airline in November 2003. It flies leased aircraft between Kabul and Dubai and Istanbul and operates several domestic routes.
In September, an Antonov-24 operated by the airline slewed off the runway while landing at Kabul airport, slightly injuring some of the 27 passengers aboard, apparently after experiencing engine trouble.
In early 1998, a transport plane operated by state-run Ariana Afghan Airlines crashed in mountains near the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, killing 51 people. That plane apparently failed to land inside Afghanistan because of bad weather.
And in March that year, about 45 people were killed when another Ariana plane slammed into a mountain peak near Kabul.
-- Journalist Victoria Burnett in Kabul and CNN Correspondent Alphonso Van Marsh in Istanbul contributed to this report
